Streaming information appliance with circular buffer for receiving and selectively reading blocks of streaming information

• US 20050060446A1
• Filed: 04/19/2004
• Published: 03/17/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/06/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Parry, William, Lee, Mingtzong
• Granted Patent: US 7,089,348 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 710/53
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/10 Digital recording or reproducing
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 2020/10666 Ring buffers, e.g. buffers wherein an iteratively progressing read or write pointer moves back to the beginning of the buffer when reaching the last storage cell
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/034 on discs G11B27/036, G11B27/038 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/105 of operating discs
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/322 used signal is digitally coded
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44004 involving video buffer management, e.g. video decoder buffer or video display buffer

Abstract

An information appliance for receiving streaming information includes a buffer, a writer module which receives blocks of streaming information and writes the blocks to the buffer, and a reader module which selectively reads the blocks from the buffer.

Claims

1-12. -12. (Cancelled).

13. A computer readable medium including instructions for implementing a method of handling multiple broadcast channels for storage in a buffer, the method comprising:

receiving streaming information;

writing the streaming information to the buffer at a write position;

reading the streaming information selectively from the buffer at a read position;

receiving a signal from a user operated switch to select one of the multiple broadcast channels; and

adjusting the read position to be adjacent to the write position when the switch is operated.

14. The computer readable medium of claim 13 wherein the buffer comprises a circular buffer.

15. The computer readable medium of claim 14 and further comprising rendering the streaming information indicative of data blocks read from the circular buffer.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15 wherein a distance between the write position and the read position corresponds to a delay between writing the streaming information and rendering the streaming information.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16 wherein the delay is at least five minutes.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 17 wherein the delay is at least thirty minutes.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 18 wherein the delay is at least one hour.