Ericsson Ab

Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (publ)

Ericsson Television Inc.

Chris Phillips

Robert Hammond Forsman

Jennifer Ann Reynolds

Charles Hammett Dasher

Sarel Cohen

Bob Forsman

Vishal Changrani

Steve Martin

Michael Huber

Anthony Richard Jones

Jimmie Rodgers

Johan Kölhi

Kuheli Haldar

Rickard Sjöberg

Mark Robertson

Carl Furgusson

Jennifer Anne Reynolds

Diomedes Kastanis

Salah Chaou

Kevin McHugh

Raj Nair

Prabhudev Navali

Edoardo Gavita

Srinivas Kadaba

Alberto Mirarchi

Gunilla Berndtsson

Per-Erik Brodin

Ian Tapp

Alvin Jude Hari Haran

Anthony Jones

Providing bitrate control for delivering media content to a plurality of virtual display (VD) screens presented in a virtual reality (VR) environment effectuated by a VR device of a subscriber based on detecting a movement in a point of view with respect the VD screens' placement within the VR environment. Each VD screen is configured to receive a media content channel. Responsive to detecting the movement, angular distance of each of the VD screens relative to a reference axis is computed. Weights to each of the media content channels may be assigned or updated based on the angular distance of the corresponding VD screens relative to the reference axis. Bandwidth of a managed bandwidth pipe may be (re)allocated based on the relative weights of the media content channels for delivering the media content channels to the subscriber's VR environment responsive to selecting single bitrates for the media channels.

Bitrate control in a virtual reality (VR) environment

A streaming policy management system and method wherein bandwidth may be allocated based on external device information received from a streaming client device connected to one or more external audio/video (A/V) devices. When a streaming network back office receives a request from the streaming client device for delivery of a particular content, wherein the request includes external device information of one or more external A/V devices connected to the streaming client device, a bandwidth is determined for streaming the particular content to the streaming client device and a request may be made to a content delivery network to create a distribution pipe having the bandwidth to accommodate the delivery of the particular content. A manifest file is provided to the streaming client device that includes one or more pointers that point to content segments of the particular content.

Streaming policy management system and method

A method performed by an electronic device for requesting tiles relating to a viewport of an ongoing omnidirectional video stream is provided. The ongoing omnidirectional video stream is provided by a server to be displayed to a user of the electronic device. The electronic device predicts for an impending time period, a future head gaze of the user in relation to a current head gaze of the user, based on: A current head gaze relative to a position of shoulders of the user, a limitation of the head gaze of the user bounded by the shoulders position of the user, and a current eye gaze and eye movements of the user. The electronic device then sends a request to the server. The request requests tiles relating to the viewport for the impending time period, selected based on the predicted future head gaze of the user.

Electronic device, server and methods for viewport prediction based on head and eye gaze

The embodiments herein relate to a method performed by a server device for handling media data streams. The sever device obtains multiple streams of source media data of varying resolution each having multiple source frames. Each source frame is divided into a plurality of tiles. The server device selects a subset of tiles from least one of the streams of source media data. The selected subset of tiles is comprised in an output frame. The server device determines layout information for the selected subset of tiles in the output frame. The layout information comprises scale, source tile index and output tile index.

Methods and devices for handling media data streams

A system and method for effectuating fast channel change in an adaptive streaming environment. A plurality of adjacent channels may be predicted relative to a current streaming channel engaged by a client device. Upon prioritizing the adjacent channels, the client device may be configured to pre-fetch metadata and initialization information for a subset of the prioritized adjacent channels based on bandwidth conditions, video player buffer status, etc. When a channel is changed, the client device is operative to use the pre-fetched data to quickly obtain encoded media content at a select bitrate for rendering.

System and method for effectuating fast channel change in an adaptive streaming environment

A system and method for providing quality control in immersive video during pausing of a video streaming session. In one embodiment, a paused video frame may comprise a plurality of mixed quality video tiles depending on user gaze vector information. Under pause control, the video quality of all tiles of the paused video frame is equalized such that it is of same value for all the video tiles, which may be the video quality of the tiles presented in a viewport of the client device. The paused video frame having the same quality tiles throughout is used as a replacement video frame, which is presented to the client device player for decoding and displaying instead of the mixed quality video frame while the streaming session is paused.

Video client optimization during pause

A system and method for providing immersive video based on gaze vector information. A gaze vector is obtained from a client device operating to display an immersive video asset to a user, wherein each video frame comprises an array of tiles projected on a 3-dimensional (3D) display environment viewed by the user in which the user is immersed, the gaze vector defining a gaze direction in the 3D display environment where the user is viewing (i.e., a viewport) at any particular time. Angular separations between the viewport and remaining portions of the video frame are used in selecting different video qualities of the immersive video asset such that the viewport comprises a higher video quality than the remaining portions when displayed by the client device.

Video optimization system and method based on gaze vector information

A system and method for inserting secondary content, e.g., advertisement content, graphics, images, etc., in a video environment. When a request is received from a client device for playing a video asset, a plurality of video tiles of the video asset are selected to be assembled as a video frame for delivery to the client device. A portion of the video tiles are identified that can be replaced with a corresponding set of advertisement content tiles, e.g., based on gaze vector information and/or a tile metadata specification containing advertisement insertion availability timing information with respect to each of the tiles of the video frame. After replacing the portion of the identified video tiles, the corresponding set of advertisement content tiles and remaining video tiles are assembled into the video frame including the advertisement content tiles at select locations, which is transmitted to the client device.

Video session with advertisement content

A multisession remote game scheme in a distributed network architecture including a dedicated network slice for gaming. A remote game rendering application service deployed in a trusted edge data network includes a remote render system (RRS) manager operative to instantiate one or more remote game rendering engines coupled to respective game engines. RRS manager interfaces to a remote gaming back office disposed in an external network, wherein the RRS manager instantiates and manages a plurality of gaming sessions responsive to game session setup requests propagated from the back office on behalf of clients. An edge routing application is configured to provide edge network location information of the game engines to the remote game back office. A multisession game slice bandwidth manager is operative to allocate a respective bandwidth to each of the plurality of gaming sessions from a dedicated bandwidth of the network slice serving the plurality of gaming sessions.

Managing network slice bandwidth for remote game sessions

A method of controlling delivery of video programs from video distribution equipment to video receiver devices includes receiving messages at the video distribution equipment from a mobile terminal operated by a user. The messages contain user defined identifiers that are associated with equipment identifiers of different ones of the video receiver devices. The user defined identifiers are stored associated with the equipment identifiers in a subscriber account. Delivery of video programs from the video distribution equipment to the video receiver devices is controlled in response to commands received from the mobile terminal which request delivery of identified video programs to identified ones of the user defined identifiers. Related video distribution equipment and mobile terminals are disclosed.

Controlling delivery of video programs using user defined identifiers for video receiver devices

There is provided a client device arranged to receive a live adaptive bitrate stream, the client device further arranged to: request a manifest file; and request a manifest update hint. The client device further arranged to receive a manifest update hint, the manifest update hint including an indication of when the manifest will be updated; and request an updated manifest file at a time indicated by the manifest update hint.

Adaptive bitrate streaming of live content

Immersive video system and method based on gaze vector information

A system and method for optimizing defragmentation of content in a content delivery network (CDN). In an example, a manifest available to the content delivery node with respect to a particular content as well as segment files stored in a database cache of the content delivery node are analyzed to determine if any segment files referenced by the manifest are absent from the database cache. If so, one or more delivery rules associated with the content delivery node based on historical ABR asset delivery patterns may be applied to determine representations of the absent segment files that satisfy the one or more delivery rules. After determining compliant representations of the absent segment files, they may be pulled from another content delivery node of the CDN (e.g., a parent node or an edge server node).

System and method for optimizing defragmentation of content in a content delivery network

A system and method for inserting secondary content, e.g., advertisement content, graphics, images, etc., in a 360-degree immersive video environment. When a request is received from a client device for playing a video asset, a plurality of video tiles of the video asset are selected to be assembled as a video frame for delivery to the client device. A portion of the video tiles are identified that can be replaced with a corresponding set of advertisement content tiles, e.g., based on gaze vector information and/or a tile metadata specification containing advertisement insertion availability timing information with respect to each of the tiles of the video frame. After replacing the portion of the identified video tiles, the corresponding set of advertisement content tiles and remaining video tiles are assembled into the video frame including the advertisement content tiles at select locations, which is transmitted to the client device.

Growing community of inventors

Hartwell, GA, United States of America

Chris Phillips