Patent 8024753 was granted and assigned to EchoStar on September, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Television converter devices in accordance with present invention determine whether the programming is to be blocked or not, then inserts an appropriate V-code into the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of the programming before delivering the programming to one or more V-chip enabled TV where the V-chip blocks the programming as appropriate. Various methods of determining whether the programming is to be blocked are disclosed.