New Vizio Patent Describes Sensor System for Correcting TV Lip Sync Problems

Vizio landed a U.S. patent Tuesday that describes a device and method for “correcting lip sync problems on display devices,” Patent and Trademark Office records show. “Maintaining synchronization” between audio and video on a modern TV “is dependent on a number of variables,” said the patent (9,723,180), which lists Vizio Chief Technology Officer Matthew McRae as the inventor, based on a January 2014 application. For example, “the sync can depend on the amount of computing performed for motion estimation and motion compensation (MEMC),” the patent said. Audio and video data in a content stream are tied together through timing codes that are in embedded in the stream’s audio frames and “associated” video frames, it said. But MEMC processing “typically causes the audio frame to be played before the video frame is displayed,” it said. McRae’s solution is a system that synchronizes audio and video by using a sensor that sees and hears the display of video and audio from an external device, it said. “The sensor creates timestamps for each of the video and audio, and then calculates a difference between those timestamps.” Those differences are then sent to the external device,“ which then compensates for the difference,” it said. Vizio representatives didn’t comment Tuesday on the company’s plans to commercialize McRae’s invention.