Extended connectivity point-of-deployment apparatus and concomitant method thereof

• US 8,887,212 B2
• Filed: 03/21/2007
• Issued: 11/11/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Syndefense
• Original Assignee: Robin Dua
• Inventors: Dua, Robin
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN BA, HOANG VU A
• Application Number:
  US11/689,365
• Publication Number:
  US 20070250872A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,792 Days
• Field of Search: 725/132, 725/115, 725/117, 725/145, 725/147, 725/31, 725/62, 725/81, 380/201, 380/270, 709/219, 709/227, 709/231, 455/41.1, 455/41.2, 455/41.3, 455/3.06, 726/28, 726/29, 705/57
• US Class Current: 725/81
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/10 Program control for peripheral devices G06F13/14 - G06F13/42 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4221 being an input/output bus, e.g. ISA bus, EISA bus, PCI bus, SCSI bus
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/14 specially adapted for billing systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/805 Lightweight hardware, e.g. radio-frequency identification [RFID] or sensor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0471 applying encryption by an intermediary, e.g. receiving clear information at the intermediary and encrypting the received information at the intermediary before forwarding
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/60 Network streaming of media packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2347 involving video stream encryption
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2543 Billing , e.g. for subscription services payment schemes, architectures or protocols G06Q20/00; e-commerce G06Q30/00; arrangements for billing for the use of broadcast information or broadcast-related information H04H60/21
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4181 for conditional access
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4183 providing its own processing capabilities, e.g. external module for video decoding
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42206 characterized by hardware details
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42221 Transmission circuitry, e.g. infrared [IR] or radio frequency [RF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/42607 for processing the incoming bitstream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4363 Adapting the video stream to a specific local network, e.g. a Bluetooth® network
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43635 HDMI
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43637 involving a wireless protocol, e.g. Bluetooth, RF or wireless LAN [IEEE 802.11] arrangements for wireless networking or broadcasting of information in indoor or near-field type systems H04B10/114
• 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 21/440218 by transcoding between formats or standards, e.g. from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 conversion of standards in analogue television systems H04N7/01
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4405 involving video stream decryption
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/441 Acquiring end-user identification , e.g. using personal code sent by the remote control or by inserting a card
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47217 : for controlling playback functions for recorded or on-demand content, e.g. using progress bars, mode or play-point indicators or bookmarks specific graphical features in visual interfaces H04N21/4312
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64322 : IP
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/163 : by receiver means only
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/06 : Authentication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/00 : Services specially adapted for wireless communication networks; Facilities therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 48/16 : Discovering, processing access restriction or access information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/08 : Mobility data transfer

Abstract

A POD module system includes a housing, a coaxial cable connector formed on the housing and connectable to a first device to receive a cable signal, a port formed on the housing to receive a wire or wireless signal from a second device, a module unit to process at least one of the cable signal and the at least one of the wireless signal to generate at least one of a copy protection signal and one of video and audio signals, respectively, and a connector formed on the housing and connectable to a third device to transmit the at least one of the copy protection signal and the one of video and audio signals to the third device such that the third device generates at least one of an image and a sound to correspond to the at least one of the copy protection signal and the one of video and audio signals.

Claims

1. A point-of-deployment (POD) module apparatus, comprising:

a housing;

a coaxial cable connector disposed on the housing and connectable to a first communication network to receive a cable signal therefrom;

a module unit to receive the cable signal and a wireless signal from a second communication network and to generate therefrom at least one of a copy-protected video signal and a copy-protected audio signal;

a connector disposed on the housing and mechanically separable from a corresponding connector on a third device and through which to transmit the at least one of the copy-protected video signal and the copy-protected audio signal to the third device such that at least one of an image and a sound corresponding to the at least one of the copy-protected video signal and the copy-protected audio signal is presented on the third device; and

a port disposed in the housing to receive the wireless signal from the second communication network and being communicatively operable with at least one of;

a local-area computer network as the second communication network through which to receive a computer generated signal as the wireless signal;

an Internet as the second communication network through which to receive network data as the wireless signal;

a wireless communication network as the second communication network through which to receive a remote control signal as the wireless signal to control the module unit and the third device;

a radio station network as the second communication network through which to receive a radio signal as the wireless signal; and

a serial communication network as the second communication network through which to receive video and audio signals as the wireless signal.

2. The POD module apparatus of claim 1, wherein the coaxial cable connector is communicatively operable with a cable network as the first communication network to receive the cable signal including an in-band signal and an out-of-band signal.

3. The POD module apparatus of claim 1, wherein the port comprises at least one of a radio transceiver, wireless network port, and a BLUETOOTH transceiver.

4. The POD module apparatus of claim 1, wherein the module unit comprises:

a tuner to generate an in-band signal from the cable signal;

an out-of-band (OOB) modem to generate an out-of-band signal from the cable signal;

a cryptographic unit to generate the copy-protected video signal and the copy-protected audio signal from the in-band signal; and

a processing unit to process the out-of-band signal and the wireless signal so as to generate auxiliary features data to be transmitted to the third device.

5. A point-of-deployment (POD) module, comprising:

a decrypter to decrypt an incoming media stream in accordance with a first code;

a receiver to receive multimedia data from an external media server;

a hard disk drive to store the decrypted media stream and the received multimedia data;

a media switch coupled to the hard disk drive to retrieve therefrom the stored media stream and the stored multimedia data;

a processor to perform multimedia time warping on the retrieved media stream;

an encrypter to encrypt the time-warped media stream; and

an interface connector through which to transmit the encrypted media stream and the retrieved multimedia data to a host device, the interface connector mechanically separable from a corresponding interface connector on the host device.

6. The POD module of claim 5, wherein the receiver receives audio components and video components as the multimedia data.

7. The POD module of claim 6, wherein the decrypter decrypts an MPEG stream as the incoming media stream.

8. The POD module of claim 6, wherein the time warping includes at least one of pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding, and slowing the stored audio and video components.

9. The POD module of claim 6, wherein the processor compels the media switch to store a first set of audio and video components corresponding to a first MPEG stream concurrently with compelling the media switch to retrieve a second MPEG stream stored on the hard disk drive to construct the retrieved media stream.

10. The POD module of claim 5, wherein the hard disk drive further stores an operating system of the POD module and applications which run on the POD module.

11. The POD module of claim 5, wherein the external media server is coupled to the receiver through at least one of the Internet, a data network, a broadcast network, and a serial communication network connected to the POD module.

12. The POD module of claim 11, wherein the time warping includes manipulating a presentation time of the multimedia data received from the at least one of the Internet, the data network, a broadcast network, and the serial communication network connected to the POD module.

13. The POD module of claim 11, wherein the receiver is a wireless receiver.

14. The POD module of claim 5, further comprising:

at least one transceiver to transmit live television programming data to another device over a data network.

15. The POD module of claim 14, wherein the other device includes at least one of a computer, a cell phone, a media player, and a personal digital assistant (PDA).

16. The POD module of claim 14, wherein the at least one transceiver is an 802.11 radio transceiver, a BLUETOOTH transceiver, or an Ethernet transceiver.

17. The POD module of claim 5, further comprising:

at least one transceiver to communicate with a peripheral device having integrated therein at least a Near Field Communication (NFC) reader.

18. The POD module of claim 17, wherein the NFC reader in the peripheral device reads registration data from a wireless Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) handset to register the handset with a VoIP service provider.

19. The POD module of claim 17, wherein the NFC reader in the peripheral device reads account data from at least one of a credit card, a cellular phone, and a payment device having integrated therein an NFC device through the NFC reader and transmits the account data to the transceiver, the POD module transmitting the account data received via the transceiver to a server over a data network coupled thereto.

20. The POD module of claim 17, wherein the peripheral device is a keyboard or a remote control.

21. The POD module of claim 17, wherein the NFC reader on the peripheral device reads identification data from an identification device having an NFC device integrated therein and transmits the identification data to the transceiver, the POD module performing user authentication over a data network coupled thereto by transmitting the identification data received thereat to a server.

22. The POD module of claim 21, wherein the identification device is a loyalty card, a membership card, an ID card, or a cellular phone.

23. The POD module of claim 17, wherein the NFC reader is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader.

24. The POD module of claim 5, further comprising:

a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) call processing module to allow a user to communicate with another user via at least one of voice over Internet Protocol and video over Internet Protocol.

25. The POD module of claim 5, wherein the external media server is a media server application running on at least one of a computer, PDA, cell phone, or media player device that synchronizes multimedia data thereon to that on the hard disk drive.

26. The POD module of claim 25, wherein the media server application indexes the multimedia data on the at least one of the computer, PDA, cell phone, or media player device.

27. The POD module of claim 26, wherein the multimedia data are received from the at least one of the computer, PDA, cell phone and media player device responsive to a user'"'"'s request initiated using a remote control or a keyboard.

28. A point-of-deployment (POD) presentation system, comprising:

a media server to provide access-protected multimedia data;

a presentation device to present accessible multimedia data in a manner perceptible by a human user;

a processor in the presentation device to generate the perceptible multimedia data from encoded multimedia data provided thereto;

a wireless transceiver mechanically separable from the presentation device at an electrical interface connector to receive the access-protected multimedia data from the media server over a wireless communication channel; and

a media processor in electrical communication with the wireless transceiver and with the processor in the presentation device through the electrical connector to decrypt the access-protected multimedia data received over the wireless communication channel and to produce therefrom the encoded multimedia data, and to provide the encoded multimedia data to the processor in the presentation device through the electrical interface connector; and

a peripheral device in communication with the wireless transceiver through a second wireless communication channel.

29. The POD presentation system of claim 28, further comprising:

a wire transceiver mechanically separable from the presentation device through the electrical interface connector to receive the access-protected multimedia data from the media server over a communication cable, the media processor decrypting the access-protected multimedia data from either of the wireless transceiver or the wire transceiver.

30. The POD presentation system of claim 29, wherein the wire transceiver includes a tuner to select the access-protected multimedia data from available access-protected multimedia data on the media server.

31. The POD presentation system of claim 28, further comprising:

a transcoder to decode the decrypted multimedia data from a format incompatible with presentation capabilities of the presentation device and to encode the decoded multimedia data into a format compatible with the presentation capabilities of the presentation device as the encoded multimedia data provided thereto.

32. The POD presentation system of claim 28, further comprising:

a storage unit on the peripheral device to store thereon multimedia data that, when retrieved therefrom, is encoded by the media processor and provided to the processor in the presentation device as the encoded multimedia data.

33. The POD presentation system of claim 32, wherein the peripheral device is another presentation device.

34. The POD presentation system of claim 28, further comprising:

a Near Field Communication (NFC) device reader in the peripheral device, the peripheral device reading data from an NFC-equipped device and transmitting the data to the wireless transceiver over the second wireless communication channel.

35. The POD presentation system of claim 34, wherein the peripheral device is a human interface device.

36. The POD presentation system of claim 35, wherein the human interface device is a remote control to select the encoded multimedia data to be presented on the presentation device and to read the data from the NFC-equipped device.

37. The POD presentation system of claim 35, wherein the human interface device is a keyboard to input data to the presentation device and to read the data from the NFC-equipped device.

38. The POD presentation system of claim of claim 34, wherein the NFC reader is a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader.

39. A point-of-deployment (POD) apparatus to descramble audio/video (A/V) data for presentation on a host device, the POD apparatus comprising:

an electrical connector to provide a communication path to the host device when mechanically coupled to a corresponding connector thereof;

a communication port selectively separable from the host device at the electrical connector through which to receive scrambled A/V data from a source other than the host device and through which to receive multimedia data from a media server over a communication channel; and

a data processing system selectively separable from the host device at the electrical connector to descramble the scrambled A/V data, to encode the descrambled A/V data into a format compatible with the presentation capabilities of the host device, to retrieve the multimedia data from the media server responsive to a corresponding user command, to encode the retrieved multimedia data into the format compatible with the presentation capabilities of the host device, and to selectively transmit the encoded A/V data and the encoded multimedia data to the host device through the electrical connector.

40. The POD apparatus of claim 39, wherein:

the communication port receives command data from a peripheral device; and

the data processing system generates user interface data and transmits the user interface data to the host device in the format compatible with the presentation capabilities thereof, receives the command data from the communication port responsive to user manipulation of the transmitted user interface data through the peripheral device, and retrieves a selected one of the scrambled A/V data and the multimedia data responsive to the command data.

41. The POD apparatus of claim 39 further, comprising:

a processor to determine whether the descrambled A/V data or the multimedia data are in the format incompatible with the presentation capabilities of the host device; and

a transcoder selectively separable from the host device to, upon a positive determination that the descrambled A/V data or the multimedia data are in the format incompatible with the presentation capabilities of the host device, encode the descrambled A/V data or the multimedia data into the format compatible with the presentation capabilities of the host device.

42. The POD apparatus of claim 39, wherein the communication port receives the scrambled A/V data from the host device.

43. A point-of-deployment (POD) apparatus to descramble audio/video (A/V) data for presentation on a host device, the POD apparatus comprising:

an electrical connector to provide a communication path to the host device when mechanically coupled to a complementary connector thereof;

a communication port through which to receive scrambled A/V data encoded in an inband signal channel, to receive incoming auxiliary data encoded in an out-of-band (OOB) channel and to transmit outgoing auxiliary data in the OOB channel;

a control port selectively separable from the host device at the electrical connector to receive user command data associated with the inband channel;

an OOB transceiver selectively separable from the host device at the electrical connector to decode the incoming auxiliary data and to encode the outgoing auxiliary data;

a data processing system selectively separable from the host device at the electrical connector to generate user interface data in accordance with the incoming auxiliary data, to transmit the user interface data to the host device in a format compatible with the presentation capabilities thereof, to receive the command data from the control port responsive to user manipulation of the transmitted user interface data, to format the outgoing auxiliary data in accordance with the command data, to encode the descrambled A/V data into the format compatible with the presentation capabilities of the host device, and to transmit the descrambled A/V data to the host device.

44. The POD apparatus of claim 43, further comprising:

a network transceiver selectively separable from the host device at the electrical connector through which to transmit the command data encoded according to a protocol of a data network coupled thereto and to receive multimedia data from the data network responsive to the command data, wherein;

the control port receives from the user command data associated with a server on the data network containing the multimedia data; and

the data processing system formats the user interface to include a user control to access the server containing the multimedia data, receives the command data associated with the server from the control port responsive to the user manipulation of the user interface corresponding to accessing the server, encodes the received command data associated with the server in accordance with the protocol, transmits the encoded command data associated with the server to the network transceiver, formats the multimedia data received from the network transceiver into the format compatible with the presentation capabilities of the host device, and transmits the formatted multimedia data to the host device.

45. A method of retrieving media data through a point-of-delivery (POD) module for presentation on a host device, the method comprising:

establishing an electrical interface between the host device and the POD module;

receiving encrypted program content data from a program content server;

decrypting the received program content file upon a positive determination that receipt thereof is authorized by the program content server;

discovering at least one media server on at least one communication network;

negotiating a communication session between the POD module and the media server;

generating a graphical user interface (GUI) listing the decrypted program content file and the media files stored on the media server;

transmitting the generated GUI from the POD module through the electrical interface to the host device;

selecting the decrypted program content file or a media file from the listing of media files via the transmitted GUI;

retrieving the selected media file from the media server through at least one command compliant with the communication session; and

transmitting a selected one of the retrieved media file and the decrypted program content data from the POD module through the electrical interface to the host device.

46. The method of claim 45, wherein the discovering of the media server includes:

accessing a wireless network as the communication network; and

discovering the media server on the wireless network.

47. The method of claim 46, further comprising:

providing the media server application to a radio communication device on a radio communication network, the radio communication device having a unique identifier on the radio communication network, wherein the discovering of the media server includes;

requesting an address of the media server application associated with the unique identifier on the radio communication network; and

receiving in response to the request the address of the media server application on the radio communication device such that the media server application is accessible through the communication network in the application-to-application communication session.

48. The method of claim 47, further comprising:

registering the address of the media server application on the communication network with a database in association with a telephone number as the identifier on the radio communication network, wherein;

the providing of the media server application includes providing the media server application to the radio communication device on a cellular telephone network as the radio communication device, the radio communication device having assigned thereto the telephone number; and

the request of the address includes transmitting the telephone number to the database, whereby the database determines the address on the communication network of the media server application.

49. The method of claim 45, wherein the negotiating of the communication session includes:

requesting an application-to-application communication session with a media server application on the media server; and

establishing the application-to-application communication session as the communication session upon a successful response to the request.