METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RECEIVING, STORING, AND PRESENTING MULTIMEDIA PROGRAMMING WITHOUT INDEXING PRIOR TO STORAGE

• US 20110035517A1
• Filed: 10/18/2010
• Published: 02/10/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dish Technologies LLC (Echostar Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Echostar Technologies LLC (Echostar Corporation)
• Inventors: Hamrick, John D. JR., Minnick, Danny, Ding, Rui, Byerley, Seth, Novoa, Manuel III, Carlson, Jay P., Yang, Yunfeng, Templeman, Mark, Cavanaugh, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 8,634,706 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 710/52
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 2220/20 Disc-shaped record carriers
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/005 Reproducing at a different information rate from the information rate of recording for television signals H04N5/783
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/28 by using information signals recorded by the same method as the main recording G11B27/22 takes precedence

Abstract

A method and apparatus for improved digital recording and presentation of broadcast information is disclosed. Received broadcast data, which may include video, audio, private, or other data, relating to one or more particular content programs, is presented from an input section to a buffer and recorded directly onto a storage device without any intelligent parsing, such as indexing, and without any manipulation by intermediate hardware or software functions. Upon normal presentation, statistics may be generated to determine the ideal number of frames to skip, the number of bytes to seek, and the size of data files to read from the storage device during time-shifted presentation. Algorithms and processes are provided to dynamically optimize time-shifted presentation. In this way, data may be captured to the storage device more efficiently and economically, and the time-shifted presentation operations may be performed in a smoother, more nuanced manner with the application of appropriate probabilistic algorithms.

Claims

1. A method for storing of multimedia data, the method comprising:

providing an input section, wherein the input section is configured to accept broadcast data and output at least video data relating to a single broadcast event to a record buffer; and

providing a record application, wherein the record application is configured to record the video data from the record buffer to a storage device without transferring any of the video data into a second buffer before storing the video data on the storage device;

wherein the input section and the record application are configured to function asynchronously and the input section and record application are configured to access the record buffer simultaneously.