Edico is a leading company in the production of automatic channel storing technology.

This kind of technology can be appreciated when installing for the first time TV receivers. In particular, Edico’s field of excellence is a system for automatically tuning and sorting TV stations that can be received by a television set.

This feature is known as ATSS (Automatic Tuning and Sorting System) or other equivalent expressions, and is protected by patents no. IT 1.241.291 and EP486988.

Example of an automatic search option, included here in the “Setup” group of the TV receiver menu

Nowadays, when using apparatuses not fitted with this system, the user must search and store manually, one by one, the received TV stations by choosing a program key on the TV remote control. Some slightly more advanced television sets carry out a frequency band scanning and the stations are stored in the order in which they are found during the scanning process. The user will then have to re-sort them manually according to a criterion which suits his/her liking.

Instead, the ATSS system carries out an automatic search for all the stations that can be received in TV frequency bands and then sorts said stations according to a predetermined order which is independent of their transmission frequency and which is set at the factory based on criteria shared by users belonging to a certain user area (typically a national state). In addition, the ATSS system also allows to re-determine the order obtained from the first procedure in the event that the result is not satisfactory for the user. This predetermined order allows to easily find the program key to which a certain TV network has been assigned. For example, the sorting typically desired by Italian users is: RAIUNO to key 1, RAIDUE to key 2, RAITRE to key 3, RETEQUATTRO to key 4, and so on. In Great Britain, said sorting will be: BBC1 to key 1, BBC2 to key 2, and so on. The predetermined order is independent of frequency, and therefore of the TV channel over which the network is broadcast in the area concerned.

An ATSS-equipped television set includes a specific command in the menu for starting the automatic program installation procedure. Since the predetermined sorting order depends on the state where the user lives, before or during this procedure the user is asked to specify his/her state or language, so that the system can select and use the predetermined order assigned to the user’s nation or geographical area.

Example screenshot for starting the automatic TV station searching and sorting process of a TV receiver

At this point, the system starts the step of scanning the frequency bands that can broadcast television programs, and the stations found are then sorted according to a factory-set criterion depending on the language and/or state selected by the user. When the search is complete, a table is displayed wherein the various TV networks are associated with respective remote control keys. Television sets using this patent also allow to change the sorting order thus obtained by means of move, delete and copy commands. At the end of these operations, the user can store the program locations according to the desired sorting order.

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