WEGENER Receives U.S. Patent For preserving data solution

Wegener Corporation, has been granted
a
U.S.
patent for an innovative, cost-effective technique designed to improve the
operation of standard definition satellite media receivers.

The new patent, entitled:
“Re-inserting VBI Data using OSD Apparatus and Method,” was awarded December
25, 2007 as Patent No. 7,312,831. 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. Most will re-insert the closed captioning but not the AMOL or
other valuable information,” said
Ned
L. Mountain,
President and Chief Operating Officer of WEGENER. “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.”

Mountain added that this patented
technology is embedded in select WEGENER satellite media receivers, including
the Unity 4600.