Continuous media stream control
First Claim
1. In a computer system that includes a plurality of media sources of different types, a method comprising the following steps:
- creating programming objects representing the respective media sources, the programming objects having common object interfaces regardless of the types of media sources represented by the respective programming objects;
invoking the interfaces of the programming objects to control media rendering from the media sources represented by the programming objects.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A network system includes one or more network servers and a plurality of available media streams. The media streams are formatted differently. Some are file-based streams, supplied by the network servers. Others are supplied by local tuners from digital and/or analog signal broadcasts. A network client executes an application program that is to control rendering of the media streams. Each media stream is represented by a programming object. Each programming object has identical interface functions that can be invoked by the application program to control playback of the different media streams even though such media streams are of different media types.
89 Citations
32 Claims
-
1. In a computer system that includes a plurality of media sources of different types, a method comprising the following steps:
-
creating programming objects representing the respective media sources, the programming objects having common object interfaces regardless of the types of media sources represented by the respective programming objects; invoking the interfaces of the programming objects to control media rendering from the media sources represented by the programming objects. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
-
-
6. In a computer network having a plurality of media streams available from one or more network servers, a method of playing the media streams at a network client, the method comprising:
-
receiving a source designation from one of the network servers, the source designation specifying a media stream; creating a programming object representing the media source based on the source designation, the programming object having common interfaces regardless of the type of media stream represented by the programming object. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9, 10)
-
-
11. In a computer system, a method comprising the following steps:
-
obtaining source designations for a plurality of media sources of different types; passing each source designation to the same object creation function; the object creation function creating programming objects representing the respective media sources based on the source designations, the programming objects having common interfaces regardless of the types of media sources represented by the respective programming objects; invoking the interfaces of the programming objects to control media rendering from the media sources represented by the programming objects. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
-
-
19. A computer system comprising:
-
programming objects representing respective media streams; the programming objects having common interface functions that are callable to control playback of different media streams even though such media streams are of different media types. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
-
-
25. A network system comprising:
-
one or more network servers; a plurality of media streams available from the one or more network servers, the media streams being of different media types; a network client; an application program executing at the network client; programming objects representing the respective media streams, the programming objects having common interface functions that are invoked by the application program to control playback of different media streams even though such media streams are of different media types. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
-
- 31. A computer-readable storage medium containing instructions for creating programming objects representing media sources of different types, the programming objects having common object interfaces regardless of the types of media sources represented by the respective programming objects, said object interfaces being callable to control rendering of media streams supplied by the media sources.
Specification