Vizio Patent Would Use ‘Predictive Time’ to Wake TVs Quickly From Sleep Mode

Using “predictive time” to turn a TV from sleep to active mode based on previously used program schedules can wake a set more quickly than conventional methods with no increase in power consumption, said a U.S. patent (9,445,038) that Vizio landed Tuesday from the Patent and Trademark Office. Standby power consumption on large-screen TVs “has dropped substantially over the past 10 years,” said the patent, which names Vizio Chief Technology Officer Matthew McRae as the inventor and was filed at the PTO in January 2014. TVs previously turned off power to the display screen when the user would actually turn off the device, the patent said. “In a continual quest to save power, televisions often now turn off power to complete subassemblies." When the user turns the set back on, the process of rebooting the set’s processors “can take anywhere from tens of seconds to over a minute,” and that “has the appearance to users of being an inordinate amount of time,” it said. Using the “present invention,” the amount of time it should take the TV to come alive “should be on the order of less than a second,” it said. Wake-up times “become more refined as time passes,” because a TV can be brought out of sleep “based on long term program selections from an electronic programming guide,” it said. The invention envisions “a database that captures user initiated turn on times and program selections of the television,” it said. “The database engine processes the database when the user turns the device off and makes a determination of when the device is most likely to be turned back on based on historical program selections. The determination results in the device being placed into a deep sleep or hibernation state, and brought back to a near operational state when it is determined that the user is most likely to want to turn the device back on.” Vizio representatives didn’t comment Wednesday on plans to commercialize the invention.