Ucentric Systems, Inc.

Chester Ruszczyk

Carlton J Sparrell

Alexander D Vasilevsky

Jinyou Zhang

A centralized interactive TV recording and reproduction system linking several 'Quality of Service' (QoS) reproduction and control units (such as television and audio reproduction receivers), as well as high bandwidth non-QoS legacy devices such as PCs, via a Home Area Network (HAN) to a centralized media server, has novel traffic control to prevent non-QoS devices from establishing and maintaining high-bandwidth network connections during the real-time transmission of media (video and/or audio) information from the media server to the QoS devices. In the preferred embodiment, the media server also contains a gateway device for connecting the HAN to a Wide Area Network, Metropolitan Area Network, and/or the Internet, and the media server also receives video and audio signals from sources such as cable, satellite, terrestrial broadcast, etc. The media server also contains a network router. All traffic from non-QoS devices is routed through the media server, and the media server limits the delivery of packets sent from source non-QoS devices to destination non-QoS devices. As a further refinement to prevent interruptions in real-time transmissions of video and audio information to QoS devices, the information can be buffered at the QoS device level.

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Acton, MA, United States of America

Chester Ruszczyk