Streaming information appliance with circular buffer for receiving and selectively reading blocks of streaming information

• US 7,089,348 B2
• Filed: 04/19/2004
• Issued: 08/08/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/06/1999
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Lee, Mingtzong, Parry, William
• Primary Examiner(s): Bataille, Pierre-Michel
• Application Number:
  US10/827,619
• Publication Number:
  US 20050060446A1
• Time in Patent Office: 841 Days
• Field of Search: 711/110, 711/111, 711/167, 711/100, 711/151, 710/52, 710/53, 710/6, 710/56, 710/58, 710/1, 710/112, 710/114, 370/351, 370/401
• US Class Current: 711/100
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/10 Digital recording or reproducing
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 2020/10666 Ring buffers, e.g. buffers wherein an iteratively progressing read or write pointer moves back to the beginning of the buffer when reaching the last storage cell
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/034 on discs G11B27/036, G11B27/038 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/105 of operating discs
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/322 used signal is digitally coded
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44004 involving video buffer management, e.g. video decoder buffer or video display buffer

Abstract

An information appliance for receiving streaming information includes a buffer, a writer module which receives blocks of streaming information and writes the blocks to the buffer, and a reader module which selectively reads the blocks from the buffer.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium including instructions that, when implemented, cause a computer to perform a method of handling streaming information comprising multiple broadcast channels, the instructions comprising:

receiving the streaming information;

writing the streaming information to a buffer at a write position;

reading the streaming information selectively from the buffer at a read position;

receiving a signal from a user operated switch to select one of the multiple broadcast channels of the streaming information; and

adjusting the read position to be adjacent to the write position when the signal is received.

2. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein the buffer comprises a circular buffer.

3. The computer readable medium of claim 2 wherein the instructions father comprise rendering the streaming information indicative of data blocks read from the circular buffer.

4. The computer readable medium of claim 3 wherein a distance between the write position and the read position corresponds to a delay between writing the streaming information and rendering the streaming information.

5. The computer readable medium of claim 4 wherein the delay is at least five minutes.

6. The computer readable medium of claim 5 wherein the delay is at least thirty minutes.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 6 wherein the delay is at least one hour.

8. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein the instructions further comprise rendering the streaming information on a display based on said one of the multiple broadcast channels.