MULTIMEDIA DEVICE
The present invention refers to a multimedia device able to integrate the various audio and video entertainment devices and accessories generally used in the home environment.
Various types of audio and video entertainment devices normally used in the home environment are currently known commercially, such as, for example, personal computers (PC), television sets, terrestrial digital decoders, satellite decoders, DVD players and home theatre systems. As is known, the PC is controlled by the user through a keyboard and mouse and the other devices are controlled by the user through their respective remote controls.
The current situation presents various drawbacks due to the presence of several devices, remote controls and user instructions. This type of multimedia entertainment system of the prior art is born and develops with separate devices that are not aligned in their respective technologies because they are purchased at different times. The end result is a multitude of untidily integrated devices that communicate poorly with each other or, in some cases, in order to communicate, must be connected to further interfaces which mediate the various technological levels of the devices.
The object of the present invention is to eliminate the drawbacks of the prior art by providing a multimedia device that is able to integrate a plurality of devices into a single device and can be controlled by the user through a single remote control.
Advantageous embodiments of the invention will be apparent from the dependent claims.
The multimedia device according to the invention comprises a main board which has hardware designed to implement the functions of a personal computer (PC).
The main characteristic of the invention is represented by the fact that the multimedia device comprises a Set-Top-Box interface designed to be connected to a television aerial to implement the functions of a digital television signal decoder. The Set-Top-Box interface is operationally connected to the main board to allow the digital television signal to be displayed by means of a monitor that can be connected to the main board.
The multimedia device further comprises an infrared (IR) receiver, operationally connected to the Set-Top-Box interface and to the main board to control both the digital decoder functions implemented in the Set-Top-Box interface and the personal computer functions implemented in the main board through a single remote control.
In this manner all the functions of both a personal computer and a digital television signal decoder are implemented in a single device that can be managed by the user with a single remote control, with the possibility of adding, simply and immediately, all the desired peripherals which are managed by the hardware installed in the main board of the personal computer.
For example, a monitor operationally connected to the main board to display images, and speakers operationally connected to the main board to broadcast the audio signal, so as to obtain a multimedia device ready for use by the user.
Media Control Interface
The Media Control Interface (MCI) provides applications created for Windows 95 with device-independent capabilities for controlling media devices such as audio hardware, videodisc players, and animation players. This interface works with MCI device drivers to interpret and run MCI commands such as pause, play, and stop.
A device type identifies a class of MCI devices that respond to a common set of commands. The following table lists the currently defined MCI device types.
MULTIMEDIA FILES
Usually, multimedia files are maintained in one of the formats described in the following table.
Multimedia files are stored on a compact disc, a local hard disk drive, a network file server, or another storage medium. The playback quality is constrained by the amount of data that the storage medium can continuously supply to the file system.
A multimedia data stream (such as an .AVI file) generally contains multiple components, such as digital-video data, audio data, text, and perhaps other data (such as hot-spot information, additional audio tracks, and so on). As multimedia information is read from the CD-ROM drive, the multimedia subsystem determines what the data stream contains, and then it separates and routes the data accordingly.
SUPPORT FOR MULTIMEDIA DEVICES
Windows 95 includes built-in support for common multimedia authoring devices such as laser discs and video-cassette recorders (VCRs). This makes it easy to set up a computer for step capture, a process in which a user captures digital-video data one frame at a time; the data is usually compressed later. This is a slow process, but it is the best way to get the best possible quality of digital video.
To play the contents of a videotape on a computer, users must connect the video and audio outputs from the VCR to the video-capture or overlay and to the audio inputs of the computer. Users might also need to install an MCI digital-video device driver.
