Sony Broadcast & Professional Research Laboratories

About: Sony Broadcast & Professional Research Laboratories is a company organization based out in Taipei, Taiwan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Signal & Layer (electronics). The organization has 38708 authors who have published 63864 publications receiving 865637 citations.

Device control with topology map in a digital network

Abstract: A topology map for a digital system is generated and displayed on a display device to indicate the various components which make up the system. The various components are indicated using icons each of which represent a respective one of the components. A user specifies a source device and a receive device by manipulating the corresponding icons so as to cause a data transfer between the source device and the receive device. The data transfer may include the transfer of video data, audio data, or both. In a preferred embodiment, the digital network corresponds to the IEEE 1394 Serial Bus Standard.

Image pickup apparatus

Abstract: An image pickup apparatus capable of improving the image quality of a picked-up image at the time of closely picking up an image is provided. In an image processing section 14, after a process of clipping a central region 31 and an image reversing process are performed in each of image pickup regions 3 of microlenses on image pickup data D1 obtained by an image pickup device 13, an image synthesizing process using images is performed to obtain image-processed data (image pickup data D2). In the image pickup data D2, the process of clipping the central region 31 is performed in each of the image pickup regions 3 of the microlenses, so even if a living organism 2 as an object subjected to image pickup is closely placed, an overlap region 32 between the image pickup regions 3 by adjacent microlenses is removed. In addition, the range of the central region 31 may have a fixed value which is set in advance, or may be changed depending on a distance between the object subjected to image pickup (living organism) 2 and a microlens array 12.

Solution of permutation problem in frequency domain ICA, using multivariate probability density functions

Abstract: Conventional Independent Component Analysis (ICA) in frequency domain inherently causes the permutation problem. To solve the problem fundamentally, we propose a new framework for separation of the whole spectrograms instead of the conventional binwise separation. Under our framework, a measure of independence is calculated from the whole spectrograms, not individual frequency bins. For the calculation, we introduce some multivariate probability density functions (PDFs) which take a spectrum as arguments. To seek the unmixing matrix that makes spectrograms independent, we demonstrate a gradient-based algorithm using multivariate activation functions derived from the PDFs. Through experiments using real sound data, we have confirmed that our framework is effective to generate permutation-free unmixed results.

Near video-on-demand signal receiver

Abstract: A video signal receiver receives a plurality of video channels simultaneously carrying, offset by a transmission interval, a single video program, selects one channel from which to obtain the program for display to a user, and achieves a pause function in the display of the transmitted video program by temporarily storing a segment of the video program equal to the length of the transmission interval and obtaining the remainder of the program at a later time from the same or another channel.

System and method for supporting interactive user interface operations and storage medium

Abstract: There is provided a system for supporting interactive operations for inputting user commands to a household electric apparatus such as a television set/monitor and information apparatuses. According to the system for supporting interactive operations applying an animated character called a personified assistant interacting with a user based on speech synthesis and animation, realizing a user-friendly user interface and simultaneously making it possible to meet a demand for complex commands or providing an entry for services. Further, since the system is provided with a command system producing an effect close to human natural language, the user can easily operate the apparatus with a feeling close to ordinary human conversation.