REMOTE RECOVERY OF IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT VIDEO SEAT BACK DISPLAY AUDIO

• US 20090007194A1
• Filed: 04/29/2008
• Published: 01/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Thales Avionics Incorporated (Thales SA)
• Original Assignee: Thales Avionics Incorporated (Thales SA)
• Inventors: McClelland, V. Ian, Heydler, Arnaud, Brady, Kenneth A. JR., Vanyek, Gary E., Law, Harmon F.
• Application Number:
  US12/111,313
• Publication Number:
  US 20090007194A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/77
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2146 located in mass transportation means, e.g. aircraft, train or bus flight-deck installations for entertainment or communications B64D11/0015; arrangements specially adapted for transportation systems in broadcast systems H04H20/62; moving wireless networks H04W84/005
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43076 of the same content streams on multiple devices, e.g. when family members are watching the same movie on different devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8106 involving special audio data, e.g. different tracks for different languages
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/10 Adaptations for transmission by electrical cable H04N7/12 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/16 Analogue secrecy systems; Analogue subscription systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/18 Closed-circuit television [CCTV] systems, i.e. systems in which the video signal is not broadcast

Abstract

A system and method permit remote recovery of audio from audiovisual or multimedia content for a video display unit. Audio is recovered from the audiovisual content sent to a first network address and is packetized for transmission over a network that may utilized an existing wiring infrastructure that provides audio and video-on-demand content to a second network address. The audio packets are reassembled by hardware associated with the second network address and analog audio created from the audio packets is provided at an output to an audio device.

Claims

1. A method of remotely recovering audio from multimedia or audiovisual content for a video display unit, comprising:

receiving, via a network, at a first network address, audiovisual content directed toward a device at the first network address;

splitting audio information from the audiovisual content;

packetizing the split audio information;

transmitting, over the network, the packetized audio information to device at a second network address;

producing an analog audio stream from the packetized audio information; and

providing the analog audio stream to an audio output device.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising providing the audiovisual content by a streaming source to the network.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the audiovisual content is video-on-demand.

4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising associating the second network address with the first network address in a one-to-one relationship.

5. The method according to claim 4, further comprising displaying visual information of the audiovisual content to a user from the audiovisual content on the video display unit associated with the first network address, and wherein the analog audio stream is provided to the user from hardware associated with the second network address.

6. The method according to claim 5, wherein the audiovisual content is routed to the first network address through a first seat electronics box, and the packetized audio stream is routed to the second network address through a second seat electronics box.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein the second seat electronics box combines the packetized audio information.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the transmitting comprises routing over a transport mechanism to a seat electronic box that corresponds to the video display unit.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the transport mechanism comprises a twisted wire pair.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein the transport mechanism utilizes an EIA-485 or RS-485 multipoint serial connection transport mechanism.

11. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

subscribing to one of a plurality of streaming sources by a user;

associated at least one of the first network address and the second network address with the user; and

maintaining a subscriber list for subscribers to each of the plurality of streaming sources.

12. The method according to claim 11, further comprising utilizing Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) to specify multicast IP address.

13. The method according to claim 1, wherein the packetized audio information is uncompressed.

14. The method according to claim 13, wherein the packetized audio information is in a 16-bit, 48 kHz format.

15. The method according to claim 1, wherein the network is an Ethernet-based network.

16. The method according to claim 1, wherein the network addresses are Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

17. The method according to claim 1, wherein the network comprises one or more switches.

18. The method according to claim 1, wherein the multimedia or audiovisual content is in MPEG format.

19. The method according to claim 18, wherein the splitting is performed with an MPEG decoder.

20. The method according to claim 1, wherein the latency between displayed video of the audiovisual content and provided audio of the audiovisual content is <

35 ms.

21. The method according to claim 1, further comprising transmitting, over the network, the packetized audio information to a device at least a third network address.

22. The method according to claim 21, wherein the transmission to the addresses comprises utilizing a multicast address.

23. The method according to claim 22, further comprising utilizing Real Time Protocol (RTP) for the transmitting.

24. The method according to claim 23, further comprising utilizing a broadcast layer 2 address and an assigned multicast layer 3 address.

25. The method according to claim 1, further comprising providing the audiovisual content by a streaming source to the network from at least one of digital servers or real-time encoders.

26. A system for remotely recovering audio from multimedia or audiovisual content for a video display unit, comprising:

a network;

a source for the audiovisual content connected to the network;

hardware connected to the network having a first network address that receives the audiovisual content from the source;

a component associated with the first network address hardware that splits audio information from the audiovisual content, packetizes the split audio information and transmits the packetized audio information over the network;

hardware connected to the network having a second network address that receives the packetized audio information over the network, and produces an analog audio stream from the packetized audio information; and

an output device that provides audio output from the analog audio stream.