(12) United States Patent ao) Patent No.: us 6,678,890 Bi
Cai (45) Date of Patent: Jan. 13,2004
(54) BIDIRECTIONAL TRANSMISSION/
RECEPTION SYSTEM AND METHOD AND
TRANSMISSION APPARATUS
(75) Inventor: Kaili Cai, Tokyo (JP)
(73) Assignee: Sony Corporation, Tokyo (JP)
( * ) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term ol this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days.
(21) Appl. No.: 09/520,485
(22) Filed: Mar. 8, 2000
(30) Foreign Application Priority Data
Mar. 10, 1999 (JP) 11-063826
(51) Int. CI.7 H04N 7/16; H04N 7/173;
H04H 9/00; G06F 17/00; G06F 19/00
(52) U.S. CI 725/24; 725/14; 725/22;
725/23; 725/131; 463/40
(58) Field of Search 725/131, 24, 14,
725/23, 22; 463/40
(56) References Cited
U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS
5,363,433 A * 11/1994 Isono 370/390
5,539,822 A * 7/1996 Lett 380/211
A system and a method for bidirectional transmission/ reception in which the information aired in e.g., television broadcast can be received with a high probability to permit a sponsor to readily comprehend the state ol reception. A collective information generating system 5 includes temporary reply recovery device 1315. . ., 13m for recovering the response data sent from the transmission/reception device 2 over a transmitting network 6, a quiz response recovery unit 14 and a CPU 15 having the information generating lunction ol generating the lottery result information based on the response data recovered by the quiz response recovery unit 14. The lottery result information generated by the collective information generating system 5 is multiplexed by the multiplexing broadcast encoder 11 and transmitted to the transmission/reception unit 2 by a broadcast transmission device 12.
24 Claims, 4 Drawing Sheets
