METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SELECTING COMPRESSION FOR AN INCOMING VIDEO SIGNAL IN AN INTERACTIVE TELEVISION SYSTEM

• US 20100250774A1
• Filed: 06/07/2010
• Published: 09/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alain Delpuch
• Original Assignee: OpenTV, Inc. (Kudelski SA)
• Inventors: Delpuch, Alain
• Granted Patent: US 9,712,799 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/231
• 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 21/42661 for reading from or writing on a magnetic storage medium, e.g. hard disk drive
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4334 Recording operations recording of a television signal H04N5/76; arrangements for recording or accumulating broadcast information or broadcast-related information H04H60/27
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4335 Housekeeping operations, e.g. prioritizing content for deletion because of storage space restrictions storage management, e.g. defragmentation G06F3/0604; unloading stored programs G06F9/445; storage management in file systems G06F16/10; buffering arrangements in a network node or in an end terminal in packet networks H04L49/90
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4402 involving reformatting operations of video signals for household redistribution, storage or real-time display details of conversion of video standards at pixel level H04N7/01; video transcoding H04N19/40; adapting incoming signals to the display format of the display terminal G09G5/005; media handling at the source in data packet switching networks H04L65/764
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/76 Television signal recording
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/781 on disks or drums
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/7921 for more than one processing mode
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/8042 involving data reduction

Abstract

A method and apparatus for applying a variable compression factor to an incoming video stream in an STB. An increased amount of video may be stored within a PVR or disk on a STB by reducing the data storage requirements of incoming video based on available storage space and the type and size of the incoming video bit stream. Included are real time compression, or reduction in storage space requirements, by various data reduction methodologies including removing bits from the incoming video stream to reduce the amount of storage required to store the video stream. A background data reduction or compression technique is also provided wherein the incoming video stream is stored and data is reduced or further compressed at a later time to reduce data storage requirements.

Claims

1. A method of adaptive data compression in a distributed data processing system, comprising:

receiving an indication to store a digital data stream at a client device;

determining a variable data reduction factor corresponding to the data stream; and

storing the data stream.

2-32. -32. (canceled)