Thomson Licensing

Thomson Licensing S.a.

Thomson Licensing Dtv

Interdigital Madison Patent Holdings

Jens Cahnbley

John William Richardson

Ishan Mandrekar

David Anthony Campana

David Brian Anderson

Shemimon Manalikudy Anthru

Kumar Ramaswamy

Ralf Ostermann

Charles Chuanming Wang

Thomas Brune

Dietmar Hepper

Siegfried Schweidler

Dieter Haupt

Uwe Riemann

Dhruba Baishya

Richard Edwin Goedeken

Dhruba Jyoti Baishya

An electronic program guide is displayed where the program guide indicates the various media being consumed by a plurality of users. Such users can be linked together via a relationship from a social networking website. In addition, the grid can display broadcast channel listings. The grid optionally provides the feature of adding and removing corresponding user and channel listings.

Automatic media asset update over an online social network

A current programming channel, and the content thereon, being displayed on a primary display device are tracked. Web content related to the content being displayed on the primary display device is searched and the resulting data is made available to a user on at least one secondary display device via a user interface. The results of the search are made available to a user such that when data resulting from the search is selected for display on the at least one secondary display device, the data is displayed on the at least one secondary display device without interfering with a display of content on the primary display device. In the event of a change of the programming channel or the content thereon, a new search is initiated for data related to content being currently viewed.

Method, apparatus and system for multiple screen media experience

There are provided apparatus and methods for parallelizing an encoding process across multiple processors. An apparatus includes a computing resource balancer and a splitter. The computing resource balancer is for assigning encoder instances to respective ones of the multiple processors based on at least one of thread affinity and process affinity. The splitter is for temporally dividing an incoming video sequence into discrete GOPs such that each of the encoder instances is capable of encoding the incoming video sequence in parallel so that each of the discrete GOPs is encoded on a respective one of the multiple processors.

Method and apparatus for real time parallel encoding

A method and system of providing a content guide that identifies a spatial relationship between the elements in the content guide is described. A controller receives electronic program guide data. The received electronic program guide data is parsed to identify a plurality of programs listed in the electronic program guide and data corresponding to at least one program description attribute for the identified programs. A relationship is determined between each identified program based on the at least one program description attribute. At least one cluster is generated and includes at least one of the plurality of identified programs based on the determined relationship. A user interface display processor generates a user interface display image representing a clustered content guide and including the at least one generated cluster enabling the user to view the relationship of the plurality of programs.

Media content spatial navigation

In a network having routing elements for routing information through the network, there is provided a method for providing an ability to set up a Quality of Service contract for a videoconference session between clients. A reservation is received for a time period for the videoconference session. Configuration information, for filtering real-time traffic corresponding to the videoconference session from other traffic traversing the network, is sent to at least one of the routing elements after the time period is reserved.

Quality of service setup on a time reservation basis

There are provided methods and apparatus for audio and video synchronization timestamp rollover correction. A synchronization apparatus includes a synchronizer for providing synchronization information for synchronizing a video stream with an audio stream during any point in a broadcast thereof irrespective of whether the video stream and the audio stream have different rollover points for their respective timestamps. The synchronization information is encoded for an out of band transmission with respect to the broadcast of the audio and video streams.

Method and apparatus for audio and video synchronization timestamp rollover correction

A method and system of providing access to related content includes a primary display that is tuned to a desired program. Information that identifies the desired program is retrieved from an electronic program guide using a content processor. A plurality of locations on a communication network are automatically searched for additional episodes of the desired program using the retrieved information via an interne interface. Links for accessing the additional episodes of the tune program are provided via a user interface display processor on a secondary display.

Smart catch-up for media content viewing

There is provided a method for employing Parameter Set information corresponding to an Advanced Video Coding (AVC) file. The method includes the step of embedding the Parameter Set information into a Hint Track of the AVC file.

Storage of advanced video coding (AVC) parameter sets in AVC file format

A method and system including a controller with an internet interface of providing enhanced content is provided. The controller receives an electronic program guide data and retrieves at least one characteristic identifying a program currently being displayed on a primary display device within the electronic program guide. At least one external content source is searched using the internet interface for information related to the program based on the at least one characteristic and the information related to the program obtained during the search is stored into a memory. The information stored in the memory and related to the first program is displayed by a user interface display processor on a second display.

Enhanced content search

A Video Server (VS) encodes a video stream according to the values of parameters and transmits the video stream over a Network to a Video Client (VC) that decodes the received video stream for presentation to a user. As the video stream is being received, (VCcontinually gathers data regarding at least the condition of Network sends this data to (VS). (VS) modifies the values of the parameters based on the data received from (VC), which in turn modifies the encoding of the video stream.

System and method for modifying a video stream based on a client or network environment

A method for providing a private conversation channel in a videoconference session between at least three participants includes the steps of providing an ability to receive a private acceptance in response to the private invitation and providing an ability to exclude non-parties to the private conversation from receiving private messages corresponding to the private conversation.

Method and system for providing a private conversation channel in a video conference system

In case of a loss of power supply a short-circuit between the corresponding pins of the two IEEE 1394 connectors of a device is established. Preferably this will be achieved by a relay controlling switches. If power is available, the relay is powered and the switches are open. The device then behaves like without this extension. If power is lost, the relay is not powered any longer, and the switches are closed. By this way, the device simply disappears from the cluster, which will then be reorganised according to IEEE 1394 rules.

IEEE 1394 cable connector with short circuit switch

The IEEE1394 bus communication protocol has three layers: physical layer, link layer, and transaction layer. A link layer IC implements the interface to an external application and prepares data for sending on the bus, or interprets incoming data packets from the IEEE1394 bus. A physical layer IC implements the direct electrical connection to the bus and controls many functions including arbitration for sending data on the bus. A problem exists due to the fact that the header data of the IEEE1394 asynchronous data packets consists of 32 bit words which have to be interpreted as 32 bit words in the connected application data processing unit ( ). The IEEE1394 bus interface unit ( ) is defined to be of big endian type. In a little endian type application data processor ( ) the data word order can only be correctly interpreted after a byte order change. According to the invention the byte order change is performed in the data link layer unit ( ) automatically with hardware circuitry for asynchronous data packets.

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Princeton Junction, NJ, United States of America

Jens Cahnbley