Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Kevin T Carle

Samuel Thomas Scott, Iii

Peter T Barrett

Geoffrey R Smith

Daniel John Zigmond

James Armand Baldwin

Dustin Lyle Green

Michael Andrew Cleron

Majd Bakar

Patrik Schnell

John Henry Grossman, Iv

David L De Heer

Victor S Lee

Landon M Dyer

Federico Garcea

David N Junod

David Alexander Collacott

David D Good

Ann E Chapman

Richard L Guthrie

In an implementation of control-based content pricing, a content server distributes media content to a client device in response to a request from the client device to receive the media content. A valuation application allocates a cost to the client device when the media content is distributed to the client device. The content server receives a view control input from the client device that indicates how the media content is to be rendered and the valuation application adjusts the cost according to the view control input and how the media content is to be rendered.

Control-based content pricing

Multiple keys are distributed to multiple clients. The keys provide access to media content. A group of clients are identified to receive substituted media content during a predetermined time period. Modified keys are generated that identify the substituted media content and the predetermined time period. The modified keys are distributed to the group of clients. The modified keys cause the group of clients to receive the substituted media content during the predetermined time period.

Program substitution

A distributed system is described that includes a notification module and multiple data-providing modules for delivering updated data to client devices. The notification module notifies the client devices of a version of the updated data. A client device then requests the identified version of the updated data. In response to the request, the distributed system selects one of the data-providing modules to provide the updated data. The selected data-providing module determines whether it has finished processing the requested version of the updated data. If so, the selected data-providing module provides the updated data; if not, the selected data-providing module rejects the request. If rejected, the client device generates another request, prompting the distributed system to select another data-providing module. The client device continues to generate requests in this manner until a request is accepted, which will eventually happen because all data-providing modules will eventually finish processing the updated data.

Caching data in a distributed system

A MediaDescription data structure that includes both descriptive metadata, such as EPG information, about a multimedia content item and instructions for acquiring the content item is assigned to each multimedia content item in a multimedia system. A MediaDescription data structure is transferable as a token for representing the content item. The acquisition information may also include information about presenting the content item in different view contexts, as well as information about relationships to other pieces of content, and information about how each different version of the content item is to be acquired and displayed. MediaDescription data structure tokens can be used to facilitate digital video recording (DVR) processes, Internet content rendering processes, multimedia search processes, search results aggregating processes, video-on-demand (VOD) processes, pay-per-view processes, and program guide rendering processes.

MediaDescription data structures for carrying descriptive content metadata and content acquisition data in multimedia systems

Raw media metadata can be packaged as dense media metadata via a compression operation. In a described implementation, metadata for a media item is defined with a media item entry that references instances of property values in one or more property tables.

Dense formats for media metadata

A mixed-media service collection for multimedia platforms allows simultaneous access to various mixed-media services for rendering multimedia content, depending on current client conditions. In one implementation, in response to the client accessing a service collection, for example, by changing channels, only some of the mixed-media services in the service collection are simultaneously actuated based on client conditions. The client conditions may include the availability of subsystems to implement services and the client's authorization to receive services. If client conditions do not allow some services in the service collection to be actuated, then other services in the service collection are available to be actuated instead.

Mixed-media service collections for multimedia platforms

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Kevin T Carle