METHOD AND DEVICE FOR GENERATING MULTIPLE LANGUAGE MESSAGES FOR DISTRIBUTION TO SET-TOP TERMINALS IN A BROADCAST TELEVISION SYSTEM

摘要

A system for providing multiple language messages for display via set-top terminals in a broadcast television network. A language preference of each terminal (122) is set individually, either by the headend of the network via initialization data, or locally, by having the terminal user select from among available languages. Terminals in the same geographic location can be set to have a different language preference depending upon the needs of the household. At the headend (110), component messages are composed in a number of different languages, and corresponding language identifiers (215, 225, 235) are provided. The component messages are combined into a single compound message (250) that can be conveniently stored, scheduled, addressed and otherwise handled as a single entity. The compound message is broadcast (130) to the terminals (180) to allow recovery of one of the component messages based on the terminal's language preference. Corresponding bit-map data (340) is selected to render the message in a pixel map for display (360). The compound message can be addressed to specific terminals or to all terminals depending on the message content. Optionally, the component messages comprise bit-map data that can be rendered directly on screen, without the need for converting codewords for text characters to bit-map data.