Harmonic, Inc.

Thomson Licensing

Benoit Guerin

Claude Perron

Xavier Besnard

Fabien Battini

Frederic Pasquier

Guillaume Cornard

A video encoder unit receives a video signal to encode along with auxiliary services such as audio streams and/or data streams. While the auxiliary streams are allotted a fixed bandwidth, the video encoder determines a required video bandwidth, which must be allocated in response to the request by a central allocator. Where economies are made in the auxiliary services for example by transmitting stereo audio instead of surround sound for example, the bandwidth requested from the central allocator is inflated by an amount corresponding to a proportion of the economized bandwidth. The extra bandwidth allocated on this basis may then be used for improving the quality of video encoding, and/or reserved for the transmission of asynchronous data.

Bandwidth saving with programmable redistribution

The invention concerns a device for inserting additional video content (inlays, secondary programs) into a main video program. Said device works in baseband within a single encoding box under the control of a common supervisor. The supervisor is configured to pass metadata associated with the images to the coder, said metadata comprising temporal, spatial and dynamic data relating to the planning of the insertion, and analysis data for the image files, which analysis data have been produced prior to the insertion. The coder receives said metadata and is configured to deduce therefrom optimization strategies for the coding that are implemented by line coding and file coding processes that are capable of being carried out simultaneously or sequentially.

Device and method for composing programmes from different sources in baseband

A method and apparatus for controlling a plurality of appliances in a home network, in which each appliance in the network has an associated descriptor comprising information for controlling the appliance. A control device for controlling the plurality of appliances includes a microprocessor for loading and processing descriptors associated with the appliances and a graphics generator for generating a display of markup language pages or page parts based on the descriptor information. The control device uses descriptors of a plurality of appliances to aggregate appliance control functions of the same type for a plurality of appliances in order to display aggregated functions on a single page.

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Rennes, France

Benoit Guerin