DIGITAL VIDEO BROADCASTING

• US 20070286243A1
• Filed: 04/18/2007
• Published: 12/13/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/11/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Screenpeaks Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Screenpeaks Ltd.
• Inventors: Olshansky, Avigdor, Caspi, Yoram
• Granted Patent: US 7,548,653 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/498
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2343 involving reformatting operations of video signals for distribution or compliance with end-user requests or end-user device requirements video transcoding H04N19/40; media packet handling at the source H04L65/762
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2365 Multiplexing of several video streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2402 Monitoring of the downstream path of the transmission network, e.g. bandwidth available traffic monitoring in data switching networks H04L43/00; monitoring data switching networks utilization H04L43/0876
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/262 Content or additional data distribution scheduling, e.g. sending additional data at off-peak times, updating software modules, calculating the carousel transmission frequency, delaying a video stream transmission, generating play-lists scheduling strategies for dispatcher in multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/4881; arrangements for scheduling broadcast services or broadcast-related services H04H60/06; flow control in packet networks H04L47/10; establishing a time schedule or organising the servicing of application requests H04L67/62
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2662 Controlling the complexity of the video stream, e.g. by scaling the resolution or bitrate of the video stream based on the client capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2665 Gathering content from different sources, e.g. Internet and satellite
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4347 Demultiplexing of several video streams

Abstract

A method is provided for transmitting a plurality of informational video programs over a single digital transport stream to a plurality of receivers, wherein the receivers are operative to select from the transport stream data identified with any given program and to decode the identified data into a displayable video signal. The method consists of storing a plurality of the informational video programs, scheduling them along corresponding simultaneous time lines, rendering each program and encoding, according to standards, into a video stream, multiplexing the video streams in an interleaved manner, and formatting them to become the transport stream, wherein any of the operations of scheduling, rendering encoding and multiplexing are such that images, obtained by decoding transmitted data identified with any of the programs and displaying the resultant video signal, are essentially similar to those obtainable by rendering and encoding the programs separately, transmitting the respective encoded program alone over a similar transmission stream, decoding the transmitted data and displaying the resultant video signal.

Claims

1. A method for enabling the concurrent transmission of a plurality of informational programs, as encoded data that is time-division multiplexed into a single digital transport stream, each program being available in a raster-based frame-by-frame image representation, the method comprising encoding the raster-based representation of each program, to obtain a corresponding digital video stream, in which data of successive frames are grouped so that one frame in each group, being a key frame, is independently encoded and other frames in that group are encoded in dependency from the key frame;

whereby entire key frames of two or more of the video streams, when multiplexed into said transport stream, are mutually staggered in time, without regard to resulting variance in the lengths of said groups in any of the video streams.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein any key frames, or portions thereof, of not more than a given number of said two or more video streams are concurrently.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein not more than one key frame of said two or more video streams is multiplexed into said transport stream at any time.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said two or more video streams are all the video streams being multiplexed into said transport stream.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein said two or more video streams are all the video streams being multiplexed into said transport stream.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein said two or more video streams are all the video streams being multiplexed into said transport stream.