Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Landon M Dyer

Martin Taillefer

Alan Bishop

Peter T Barrett

Thomas Henry Taylor

Peter John Potrebic

Mark Wagner

Stanley William Adermann

Samuel Thomas Scott, Iii

Richard E Moore

Bruno C Silva

Kevin T Carle

Federico Garcea

David N Junod

David D Good

Functionality is described for controlling the playback of a recorded media program. The functionality formulates initial playback decisions that govern the playback of the program based on a set of initial assumptions. The functionality then formulates modified playback decisions that define the manner in which the program should actually be played back. The modified playback decisions can be formed based on the playback-related behavior of a population of users who have previously consumed the same program. The functionality makes modifications which affect the playback of the recorded program based on the modified playback decisions, such as by bookmarking or truncating the recorded program.

Strategies for controlling presentation of media information based on a sampling of customer playback behavior

A first software program executing on a computing device emulates a second computing device executing a software program using emulated memory. The first software program permits the second software program to perform an operation on a contiguous portion of the emulated memory only when a pointer and a table entry both contain the same identifier, thus protecting against common types of memory usage errors in the second software program. The pointer has an address to the contiguous portion. The table entry maps to the contiguous portion. A plurality of table entries map to a respective plurality of contiguous portion of the emulated memory. A plurality of the pointers each contain the address to a respective contiguous portion of the emulated memory as well as containing an identifier corresponding to the respective contiguous portion of the emulated memory. The second computing device can be high or low in resources.

Emulated memory management

Damage to removable or non-removable media or to content on the media may prevent access to content on the media. A processor may recognize a defect in the media, for example, due to read errors. The processor may request a 'clean' (i.e., undamaged) or replaceable version of the non-readable media content. The processor may request the content over a network. The processor may store the requested content in local storage, such as in the cache or more permanent memory. The processor may read the requested portion directly over the network or from the stored location, rather than reading the damaged portion from the removable media. Once stored locally, the clean version may be available for subsequent access. Subsequently, the processor may request previously stored content from local storage without needing to request content over the network.

Media disc reliability

A computing device hosts a virtual machine executing a guest that issues guest hardware requests by way of any of a plurality of paths. Such paths include a path to non-existent virtual hardware, where an emulator intercepts and processes such guest hardware request with a corresponding actual hardware command; a path to an instantiated operating system, where the instantiated operating system processes each such guest hardware request with a corresponding actual hardware request; and a path to device hardware, where the device hardware directly processes each such guest hardware request.

Partial virtualization on computing device

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 first software program executing on a computing device emulates a second computing device executing a software program using emulated memory. The first software program permits the second software program to perform an operation on a contiguous portion of the emulated memory only when a pointer and a table entry both contain the same identifier, thus protecting against common types of memory usage errors in the second software program. The pointer has an address to the contiguous portion. The table entry maps to the contiguous portion. A plurality of table entries map to a respective plurality of contiguous portions of the emulated memory. A plurality of the pointers each contain the address to a respective contiguous portion of the emulated memory as well as containing an identifier corresponding to the respective contiguous portion of the emulated memory. The second computing device can be high or low in resources.

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Medina, WA, United States of America

Landon M Dyer