Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Renaud Bordelet

Toby Steele

Glenn Alexander Curtis

Paul Michael Irwin

Hans Peter Hess

Hiroshi Ohno

Cory J Cirrincione

Min Liu

Anthony Vincent Discolo

Frederic Azera

Shawn E Pickett

Colin Lee Acton

Michael S Hayton

Ying Wu

Zhen Ma

Rathe Hollingum

Lorcan Mooney

Wei Ning

A system is disclosed for media content search and retrieval, and a virtual television channel capable of using that system. The present system may be implemented on a computing device, such as for example a media service server, and a client device, such as for example a set top box for a television system, a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant or a gaming console. A first aspect of the present system relates to a media download control engine which enables a client device with limited capabilities to play media content which comes from a website in a format not supported by the client device. A second aspect of the present system may make use of the media download control engine to obtain media content and create customized virtual channels. The second aspect in particular relates to a virtual channel engine that schedules a continuous stream of content for the user, which content is selected based on topics of interest to the user.

Media content retrieval system and personal virtual channel

Detailed herein is a technology which, among other things, allows recording and playback of multi-stream interactive television. In one approach to this technology, the service configuration for an interactive television feature is determined. Data describing this service configuration is then obtained, and a recording device is then configured to record a portion of the interactive television feature. A number of data streams associated with that portion of the interactive television feature are recorded. The recorded portion of the interactive television feature can then be displayed.

Recording multi-stream interactive television

Optimized scanning for EPG data in the streams is provided by performing interim scans based on user data. The user data is gathered based on services accessed by one or more users of the device. The streams are then ranked according to the data and a scan threshold of a subset of streams to scan is defined. A interim scan occurs on a subset of streams up to the threshold streams after a first time interval after which scanning may end.

Digital TV scanning optimization

Techniques are disclosed herein for merging EPG data associated with a variety of program sources. In one aspect, EPG data is accessed for different program sources and rules are selected that define how entries in the EPG data are to be merged. The rules may be selected based on whether the EPG data was collected in-band or out-of-band. In addition, the merging rules can be dependent on the program source, which allows the flexibility of applying different rules to different program sources. The EPG data from the different program sources is merged into a single EPG based on the selected rules.

Merging electronic program guide information

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Dublin, Ireland

Renaud Bordelet