Systems for unifying heterogeneous multimedia tuners

• US 20060035610A1
• Filed: 08/13/2004
• Published: 02/16/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 08/13/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Potrebic, Peter J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,380,264 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/178.100
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 40/18 Arrangements characterised by circuits or components specially adapted for receiving
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4147 PVR [Personal Video Recorder] H04N5/76 takes precedence ; arrangements for broadcast with accumulation-type receivers H04H20/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4263 involving specific tuning arrangements, e.g. two tuners
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/458 Scheduling content for creating a personalised stream, e.g. by combining a locally stored advertisement with an incoming stream; Updating operations, e.g. for OS modules ; time-related management operations arrangements for replacing or switching information during the broadcast or during the distribution H04H20/10

Abstract

A system for unifying heterogeneous multimedia tuners is described. The system is capable of producing a unified channel lineup and coordinating multiple diverse tuners to perform multimedia tasks associated with the unified lineup. In one implementation, tuner allocation policy allows behind-the-scenes tuner assignment and on-the-fly tuner swapping so that the user experience is seamless, access quality is continuously optimized, and tuners with the most bandwidth are kept available.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

identifying multiple tuners for accessing multimedia channels, wherein at least one of the tuners is capable of uniquely accessing one or more of the multimedia channels;

creating a unified lineup of the multimedia channels; and

dynamically assigning the tuners to fulfill access requests for viewing and/or recording multimedia content of the multimedia channels in the unified lineup according to one or more policies.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the dynamically assigning includes swapping tuners during an access of the multimedia content to uphold the one or more policies.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said at least one of the tuners has unique access to a multimedia content.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said at least one of the tuners has a capability of providing a unique access quality.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more policies include, in response to one of the access requests, assigning a tuner to the access request that delivers higher quality over assigning a tuner that delivers lower quality.

6. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the multimedia channels deliver one of audio content, video content, or data content.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more policies include, in response to one of the access requests, assigning a tuner that is capable of accessing a lesser number of channels prior to assigning a tuner that is capable of accessing a greater number of channels, if the tuner that is capable of accessing a lesser number of channels is capable of fulfilling the access request.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more policies include designating a primary viewing tuner and a primary recording tuner to be assigned first, if available, to respective viewing and recording tasks.

9. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising dynamically swapping an assigned tuner to fulfill the one or more policies.

10. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

creating a list of viewing tuners selected from the multiple tuners, wherein the listed viewing tuners are prioritized according to the one or more policies;

creating a list of recording tuners selected from the multiple tuners, wherein the listed recording tuners are prioritized according to the one or more policies; and

in response to access requests for viewing and/or recording the multimedia content, dynamically assigning tuners from the list of viewing tuners and from the list of recording tuners according to the one or more policies and swapping an assigned tuner as needed to fulfill the one or more policies.

11. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the list of viewing tuners:

relates each channel in the unified lineup to the viewing tuners that are capable of accessing the channel,

prioritizes the viewing tuners according to the access quality that each viewing tuner is capable of providing, and

prioritizes the viewing tuners according to the number of multimedia channels in the unified lineup that each viewing tuner is capable of accessing.

12. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the list of recording tuners:

relates each channel in the unified lineup to the recording tuners that are capable of accessing the channel,

prioritizes the recording tuners according to the access quality that each recording tuner is capable of providing, and

prioritizes the recording tuners according to the number of multimedia channels in the unified lineup that each recording tuner is capable of accessing.

13. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising classifying a relationship between a first tuner and a second tuner of the identified tuners and determining the one or more policies based on the classifying.

14. The method as recited in claim 13, wherein the relationship comprises mutual exclusivity between a first set of channels tuned by the first tuner and a second set of channels tuned by the second tuner.

15. The method as recited in claim 13, wherein the relationship includes an identity of channels tunable by the first and second tuners, wherein the first and second tuners access the identical channels at different levels of access quality.

16. The method as recited in claim 13, wherein the classifying comprises determining a relationship between a first tuner that accesses a set of channels and a second tuner that accesses a subset of the set of channels.

17. The method as recited in claim 13, further comprising determining a relationship between the first and second tuners based on both a difference in channels accessed by the first and second tuners and a difference in access quality provided by the first and second tuners.

18. A system, comprising:

multiple tuners for accessing multimedia channels, wherein at least one of the tuners is capable of uniquely accessing one or more of the multimedia channels;

a user experience engine to create a unified lineup of the multimedia channels and a unified electronic program guide corresponding to the unified lineup; and

a tuner integration engine coupled with the user experience engine to dynamically assign at least some of the tuners to fulfill access requests for viewing and/or recording multimedia content of the multimedia channels in the unified lineup according to one or more policies.

19. The system as recited in claim 18, further comprising a tuner prioritizer to sort the tuners into an order, wherein a highest tuner in the order is first to be assigned.

20. A unified experience engine for integrating multimedia content from heterogeneous tuners into a unified user experience, comprising:

a tuner integration engine to unify heterogeneous channel lineups associated with the heterogeneous tuners into a unified channel lineup and to dynamically assign one of the heterogeneous tuners to one of a viewing task or a recording task associated with the unified lineup;

an electronic program guide data integrator to provide unified program guide metadata corresponding to the unified channel lineup; and

a user interface for interactively presenting the unified channel lineup and the unified program guide metadata to a user.

21. The unified experience engine as recited in claim 20, wherein the tuner integration engine, during the viewing or recording task, swaps the assigned tuner for a different tuner.

22. The unified experience engine as recited in claim 21, wherein the policy includes one of:

presenting the user with an increased access quality,

allocating higher access quality tuners in preference to allocating lower access quality tuners, and

freeing for a potential future task the tuners that are more capable of accessing channels.

23. The unified experience engine as recited in claim 20, wherein a personal video recorder comprises the unified experience engine.

24. The unified experience engine as recited in claim 20, wherein a digital video recorder comprises the unified experience engine.

25. The unified experience engine as recited in claim 20, wherein a computing device comprises the unified experience engine.

26. A tuner integration engine, comprising:

a lineup integrator to unify heterogeneous channel lineups associated with multiple tuners into a unified channel lineup;

a tuner prioritizer to sort the multiple tuners according to one or more abilities; and

a tuner assignment engine to assign one of the tuners to a multimedia task according to a policy.

27. The tuner integration engine as recited in claim 26, wherein the lineup integrator further includes:

a duplicated channel resolver to map channels duplicated across multiple tuners to a single channel number in the unified channel lineup;

a conflicting channel number resolver to assign channels competing for the same channel number to different channel numbers; and

a channel interleaver to order the channels into the unified channel lineup.

28. The tuner integration engine as recited in claim 26, wherein the tuner prioritizer further includes:

a lineup comparator to prioritize tuners according to the number of channels that each tuner can access;

a channel-to-tuner correlator to associated each prioritized tuner with the channels the tuner is capable of accessing; and

a signal quality detector to prioritize tuners according to an access quality provided by each tuner.

29. The tuner integration engine as recited in claim 26, wherein the tuner assignment engine further includes:

tuner allocation policies to govern assignment tuners to tasks;

a tuner assignor to match one of the tuners to a multimedia task according to one of the policies; and

a tuner swapper to swap tuners according to one of the policies in response to a request to assign a tuner to a new multimedia task.

30. The tuner integration engine as recited in claim 29, wherein the tuner allocation policies include one of:

presenting a user with a highest available access quality,

favoring higher access quality tuners for assignment to a task over lower access quality tuners,

freeing for a future task the tuners that are capable of accessing a greater number of channels, and

allocating to tasks the tuners that are capable of accessing the least number of channels, if the tuners that access the least number of channels are capable of performing the tasks.

31. The tuner integration engine as recited in claim 26, wherein the tuner assignment engine further has access to a viewing tuner list of prioritized viewing tuners and a recording tuner list of prioritized recording tuners.

32. The tuner integration engine as recited in claim 26, further comprising a configuration classifier to determine a relationship between two or more or the heterogeneous tuners and determine the tuner allocation policies based on the relationship.

33. A system, comprising:

means for identifying heterogeneous tuners for accessing multimedia channels, wherein at least one of the tuners is capable of uniquely accessing one or more of the multimedia channels;

means for creating a unified lineup of channels accessed by the heterogeneous tuners; and

means for dynamically assigning the tuners for viewing and/or recording the multimedia channels, according to the one or more policies.

34. The system as recited in claim 33, wherein the one or more policies optimize access quality for a user experience and conserve bandwidth of the heterogeneous tuners during use of one or more of the tuners.

35. The system as recited in claim 33, further including means for swapping tuners during an access of the multimedia content to uphold the one or more policies.

36. The system as recited in claim 33, further comprising:

means for creating a list of viewing tuners selected from the multiple tuners, wherein the listed viewing tuners are prioritized according to the one or more policies;

means for creating a list of recording tuners selected from the multiple tuners, wherein the listed recording tuners are prioritized according to the one or more policies; and

means for dynamically assigning tuners from the list of viewing tuners and from the list of recording tuners according to the one or more policies and swapping an assigned tuner as needed to fulfill the one or more policies, in response to access requests for viewing and/or recording the multimedia content.

37. The system as recited in claim 36, further comprising:

means for relating each channel in the unified lineup to the viewing tuners that are capable of accessing the channel,

means for prioritizing the viewing tuners according to the broadcast quality that each viewing tuner is capable of delivering, and

means for prioritizing the viewing tuners according to the number of multimedia channels in the unified lineup that each viewing tuner is capable of accessing.

38. The system as recited in claim 36, further comprising:

means for relating each channel in the unified lineup to the recording tuners that are capable of accessing the channel,

means for prioritizing the recording tuners according to the broadcast quality that each recording tuner is capable of delivering, and

means for prioritizing the recording tuners according to the number of multimedia channels in the unified lineup that each recording tuner is capable of accessing.

39. A computer readable medium containing instructions that are executable by a computing device to perform actions, comprising:

integrating diverse channel lineups associated with multimedia tuners into a unified lineup; and

dynamically assigning some of the multimedia tuners to viewing and recording tasks of the unified lineup according to a policy.

40. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 39, further comprising instructions to swap the dynamically assigned tuners according to the policy in response to a new task.

41. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 39, wherein the policy includes one of:

selecting a preferred tuner for tasks, wherein the preferred tuner is committed to a first task first before other tuners; and

if the first task is a recording task, then in response a subsequent request for a viewing task, swapping the preferred tuner from the recording task to the subsequent viewing task.

42. The computer readable medium as recited in claim 39, wherein the policy includes freeing for a subsequent request the tuners that are most capable of accessing channels.

43. A method, comprising:

in a multimedia system that includes multiple tuners, wherein at least some of the tuners possess differing capabilities for providing access quality and at least some of the tuners possess differing capabilities for providing access quantity,

assigning a tuner that provides a higher access quality to a task prior to assigning a tuner that provides a lower access quality; and

assigning a tuner that provides a lower access quantity to a task prior to assigning a tuner that provides a higher access quantity, if the tuner that provides the lower access quantity can perform the task.

44. The method as recited in claim 43, wherein the access quality comprises one of a viewing quality, an audio quality, or a data integrity quality.

45. The method as recited in claim 43, wherein the access quantity comprises a quantity of multimedia channels that a tuner is capable of accessing.

46. The method as recited in claim 43, wherein the task comprises one of viewing a multimedia channel or recording a multimedia channel.

47. The method as recited in claim 43, further comprising:

assigning multiple tuners to multiple tasks; and

swapping at least some of the tuners in response to receiving a request to perform a new task, wherein the swapping allows assigning a tuner that provides a higher access quality to the new task instead of assigning a tuner that provides a lower access quality.

48. The method as recited in claim 43, further comprising:

assigning multiple tuners to multiple tasks; and

swapping at least some of the tuners in response to receiving a request to perform a new task, wherein the swapping allows assigning a tuner that provides a lower access quantity to the new task instead of assigning a tuner that provides a higher access quantity.