Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Other

Gates, William H., III

Harry S Pyle

Richard L Hasha

Guillaume Simonnet

Christian R Lehew

Nicholas Jie Fang

Daniel Ron Simon

Vishal Sood

Bruce Louis Lieberman

William Dollar

Robert Kilroy Hughes, Jr

Raymond Cheng

Hui Jin

Torsten A Gelland

Raymond W C Cheng

Richard Hasha

A computer-implemented method for seamlessly playing a composite media presentation, includes receiving, by a sequencer, a sequential playlist provided by a scheduler. The sequential playlist refers to a sequence of one or more streaming media content items. The sequencer receives calls from a native player application at regular intervals, and sends playback segments and seekbar update information to the native player application based on the sequential playlist in response to the calls. The native player application is configured to play the composite media presentation using at least one core player and generate a corresponding seekbar for the presentation based on the playback segments and the seekbar update information sent by the sequencer.

Seamlessly playing a composite media presentation

The subject disclosure relates to dynamic composition including the ability to create interoperable combinations of content by the publisher, e.g., determined to be an optimal combination, and offer such combinations to client devices in an interoperable way to allow simple selection by devices without complex programming, web pages, etc. specific to each device. Compositions are dynamic in that new audio, video, subtitle, etc. tracks can be added to a given composition without changing any of the other tracks, e.g., by updating the composition's extensible markup language (XML), and new compositions can be created or removed at any time without changing any audio or video files. Interoperable and scalable 'discovery' is also enabled whereby random devices can contact a Web server, find and play a composition matched to the given devices and users, e.g., optimal composition for a given device and user. Using the content identification and description format of compositions, devices can search, sort, browse, display, etc. content that is available, determine if it is compatible at the device, decode, and determine digital rights management (DRM) level, and content level.

Dynamic composition of media

An adaptive stream player that has control over whether a retrieved stream is cached in a local stream cache. For at least some of the stream portions requested by the player, before going out over the network, a cache control component first determines whether or not an acceptable version of the stream portion is present in a stream cache. If there is an acceptable version in the stream cache, that version is provided rather than having to request the stream portion of the network. For stream portions received over the network, the cache control component decides whether or not to cache that stream portion. Thus, the cache control component allows the adaptive stream player to work in offline scenarios and also allows the adaptive stream player to have rewind, pause, and other controls that use cached content.

Cache control for adaptive stream player

Systems and methods for use in connection with the trusted transmission and reception of content, such as encryption key information, from one computing device in a network to a second computing device are provided. In one embodiment, the invention provides a way to trust or validate the transfer of a public key using a very short code entered out of band of the network that is easy for end-users to remember, or write down.

Trusted network transfer of content using off network input code

A process for establishing secure mutual trust includes generating a one-time-password. The one-time-password is transferred between the devices in a communication occurring off of the network. Each device generates a set of authenticators by hashing a plurality of sub-strings of the password and the device's authentication certificate with a respective set of nonces. The devices exchange the respective sets of authenticators. Each device then alternates revealing its respective set of nonces and its authentication certificate in a multi-stage process. The devices re-calculate the authenticators based upon the respective set of nonces and authentication certificate revealed by the other device along with the one-time-password sub-strings that it posses. If each device determines that the authenticators re-calculated by the given device matches the authenticators previously received from the other device, secure mutual trust is established.

Establishing secure mutual trust using an insecure password

Described herein are techniques to facilitate the improvement of network throughput. An implementation described herein measures throughput over a data-communications network and between at least two endpoints on the network. This implementation also displays a graphical representation depicting the present throughput of the network as it is measured. The graphical representation has an identified target throughput threshold, and that threshold is indicative of an acceptable level of throughput for the usage being targeted, such as high-quality video streaming.

Network performance tuner

A method and system for generating a user interface for controlling software components through a user control point device. The user interface system provides multiple software components that each can provide a user interface component. Each user interface component provides a user interface for the corresponding software component. A user control point component requests each software component to provide its user interface component. The user control point component then displays an indication of each software component. In response to the selection of a software component, the user control point component requests the user interface component for that software component to display its user interface through the control point device. When a user interacts with that user interface, the user interface component notifies the corresponding software component of the interaction.

Method and system for generating a user interface for distributing devices

Systems and methods for enabling secure dynamic credential distribution to a machine over a network are provided. In various embodiments, a computer, into which logging or access is sought, distributes logon credentials automatically to a requestor over the network before logon. Based on pre-existing trust, the computer self-generates and self-distributes logon credentials to the requestor, whereby the logon credentials are not stored on the requestor device.

Secure dynamic credential distribution over a network

Systems and methods for automatic network optimization with application variables are provided. Operation of a protocol stack, such as an SCP stack, relies upon a number of persistent variables, which are remembered over power and reset cycles, used in connection with controlling protocol timing and behavior. These application variables are handled at the network layer of the protocol and may be assigned values by an address space arbitrator, which is an entity responsible for managing the logical network. Each node member of a logical network maintains a set of values for its application variables. This set can be handled by the protocol's network layer, and can be saved in persisted storage. Since the variable values may be modified asynchronously, they are treated as volatile and thus, when a variable is used, its value is obtained through an application interface exposed by a network layer, e.g., through polling. An exception to this procedure is a data link layer, which obtains some operating parameters on every call by the network layer. Optimization of application variables enables reliable operation of a logical network operating under low bandwidth network conditions, etc.

Systems and methods for providing automatic network optimization with application variables

Providing presence tracking of nodes of a logical network in a distributed computing system. Each node in a logical network tracks the presence of all other nodes on the network. This presence information is used by the protocol to optimize bandwidth utilization of the shared physical media, by not attempting to communicate with a device that does not appear to be or is unlikely to be present. In one embodiment, the presence tracking is applied to a power line carrier (PLC) physical media because of PLC's low-bandwidth characteristics, low baud rate characteristics and the widespread usage of plugged-in devices, the presence of which on the network is generally more transient by nature.

Systems and methods for providing presence tracking in a distributed computing system

Method and system for tracking software components

Method and system for generating a user interface for distributed devices

A method and system for controlling environmental conditions, such as lighting. The lighting system provides an architecture that includes a scene description data structure. A scene defines one or more circuits and a target state for the lights on those circuits. The scene description data structure specifies circuits within a scene and specifies a target state for the lights on those circuits within a scene. The lighting system provides a lighting gateway that retrieves and provides scene descriptions to assist in generating a user interface for enabling scenes, and that receives requests to enable scenes and then requests a lighting controller to enable the target state for each circuit within the scene. Each space (e.g., area or room) within the environment has a lighting component that provides a standard programmatic interface to the control the lights from a space. The lighting component retrieves scene descriptions from the lighting gateway and receives requests from a user control point device to enable a scene and then forwards the requests to the lighting gateway.

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Harry S Pyle