[Satellite Today – 1-16-08] Wegener Corp. has been granted a U.S. patent for a technique designed to improve the operation of standard definition (SD) satellite media receivers, the company announced Jan. 16.
    The new patent, entitled: "Re-inserting VBI Data using OSD Apparatus and Method," was awarded Dec. 25. According to the company, during the digital video encoding process, valuable data is stripped out of the VBI (Vertical Blanking Interval) of standard definition video including: closed captioning, AMOL (Automated Measurement of Lineups – used for rating measurements), XDS data for V-Chip, and Teletext in Europe. Wegener embeds its solution within its satellite media receivers to re-insert those data services back into the VBI prior to sending the signals to viewers’ television sets.
    "The problem we found was that most chipsets on the market don’t readily support re-inserting all of this data into the VBI,” said Ned L. Mountain, president and COO of Wegener. “Most will re-insert the closed captioning but not the AMOL or other valuable information. Wegener’s solution uses the decoding chip’s on-screen-display circuitry to render the data waveforms directly onto the VBI signals of the video.  In this way, all VBI services are still supported, without adding any additional cost to the receiver."