Comcast Cable Communications, LLC

Neill A Kipp

Richard Joseph Fliam

Joseph Kiok

Jan Van Doorn

Justin Riggert

Jiang Xu

Martin Trang

Jamie Batmanglidj

Jason S Burgess

David M Arbuckle

Stuart Kurkowski

Blake Orth

Michael Reedell

Yasser Fouad Syed

Gregg Brown

Methods and systems for managing data and transmission of content are disclosed. A computing device may receive a request for content. The computing device may determine data associated with the requested content.

Methods and systems for processing data requests

Methods and systems are described herein to predict events within a content stream. Based on the predicted events, information may be embedded within the stream. A computing device that receives the content stream may detect the predicted event and may wait a randomly generated time before requesting information associated with the predicted event, such as requesting an advertisement to output. After detecting the predicted event, the computing device may wait a randomly generated time before requesting an advertisement. The system may respond to the computing device with an instruction or with supplemental content, such as with an advertisement for later output. The computing device may cache the advertisement. The computing device may detect the actual marker indicating a timestamp for when the advertisement should be output. The computing device may output the advertisement at the time indicated by the timestamp.

Systems and methods for predictive content delivery

Systems, apparatuses, and methods are described for identifying addressable advertisement slots in media/video streams and utilizing the addressable advertisement slots. The identifying and/or the utilizing may be based on metadata associated with the media/video streams and/or viewers/audiences associated with different distributors/operators. The metadata, which may be collected from a content provider or a third-party suppliers, may be provided, via out-of-band signaling, to the different distributors/operators. The different distributors/operators may use information in the metadata to use identified addressable advertisement slots (e.g., by inserting different advertisements specifically targeted to those viewers/audiences associated with a particular distributor) and potentially generate a higher cost per thousand impressions (CPMs).

Addressable content item insertion

Systems, apparatuses, and methods are described for adjusting capacity in a networking environment. A networking system comprising clients, servers, load balancers, and/or other devices may expand and contract network capacity as needed. When expanding network capacity, load balancers may instruct client devices to connect to servers that are part of the expanded network. When network capacity is reduced, a server and/or a load balancer my instruct client devices to close a connection with a first server and establish a connection with a second server. Client devices may seamlessly begin using the connection with a second server without having to wait for a connection timeout with the first server.

Managing service capacity

Methods and systems for using text data in content presentation and content search are disclosed. Text data and a plurality of video frames can be extracted from a content program and stored in a database. Extracted text data can be divided into a plurality of text segments. The plurality of text segments and the plurality of video frames can be presented in the form of an electronic book or guide. In addition, the content program can be divided into a plurality of content segments and stored in the database. The plurality of content segments and the plurality of text segments can be associated by time indices. A user can identify one or more content segments in the database by a query, and notifications can be sent according to the query.

Using text data in content presentation and content search

Methods, systems, and apparatuses are described for fault tolerant network storage and delivery of recorded content. Two or more network digital video recorders may each receive a plurality of requests to record, archive, and/or play back content items, such as television programs. Each network digital video recorder may receive capacity reports of statistics such as storage and/or bandwidth from one or more other network digital video recorders. At least one of the network digital video recorders may determine whether, based on a network capacity, to record, archive, and/or playback content items. The methods, systems, and apparatuses may accommodate equipment failures that lead to partitions between network digital video recorders.

Method and apparatus for capacity exchange

Disclosed are various systems and methods for fault tolerant video packaging and transmission. A video packager may receive one or more video content transmissions from a transcoder, and may identify deficient segments, packets, or other portions of the video content transmission. The video packager may also maintain or have access to a default video output that is free of the identified deficiencies. For example, the default video output can include one or more segments of video data comprising a blank or solid color frame, or a still image. The deficient data may be determined based on validation parameters. If the validation parameters are satisfied, the received data is packaged and transmitted. Otherwise, the default video output is packaged to replace deficient portions, and transmitted instead of the received video content.

Methods and systems for fault tolerant video packaging

Playback devices may receive video content and an age of a playlist associated with the video content. A playback device may use the age of the playlist to schedule output of video fragments of the video content. The playback device may adjust the output of the video content until an actual output time of a video fragment is substantially the same as the scheduled output time for the video fragment.

Growing community of inventors

Centennial, CO, United States of America

Neill A Kipp