| 摘要 |
Textual and graphical displays are provided on a television screen using a hypertext markup language (HTML). On-screen display devices allow a user to invoke hyperlinks to different pages of HTML-coded data in addition to function calls for controlling television and non-television appliance functions. A method provides HTML-coded display data which is processed to provide a signal suitable for reproduction on a television. The display data may provide information on a featured movie (325) or other presentation of an associated video programming service signal such as a network television broadcast (315). Function calls (232, 510, 530, 550) allow the control of various television functions and programming options, such as the purchase of pay-per-view programming (330), or television display options such as aspect ratio (512, 514), channel, brightness (518), picture-in-picture, or split-screen. Non-television appliances which may be controlled with function calls include audio equipment which is associated with the programming service (e.g., surround sound (552), filtering (554, 556)) in addition to, for instance, a home heating and air conditioning system (536, 538) or other household appliances (532, 534). The invention allows a designer to adapt the vast HTML resources of the Internet for use in the television environment for entertainment, educational or informational purposes. <IMAGE> |
