Automatic time set in a television system (Patent)

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and apparatus for automatically setting the time in a peripheral device (170) in a television system (10). In the preferred embodiment, a datastream (300) with packets of data (310-313) is broadcast to the peripheral device (170). A time value (400) within the received datastream (300) is used to set the time within the peripheral device (170). The data within the received datastream (300) also contains a cyclic redundancy check (410) which is used to determine when an error is present in the received data packet (310). The time is set in the peripheral device (170) only when the cyclic redundancy check has found no errors in the data packet (310). When needed, additional values within the received packet (310) can later be used to correct the time which has been set in the peripheral device (170).