Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer-to-computer data modifying – Compressing/decompressing
Reexamination Certificate
2000-06-23
2004-01-13
Luu, Le Hien (Department: 2152)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer-to-computer data modifying
Compressing/decompressing
C709S246000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06678740
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF USE
The invention finds utility in the head end offices of cable TV operators, ADSL system head end and potentially wireless head ends for delivery of video-on-demand programming in digital format as well as other services such as digital telephony or wideband internet access.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Most cable TV systems in the prior art have been broadcast only where individual programs were modulated onto 6 MHz bandwidth analog RF carriers that were frequency division multiplexed. As the internet became more popular and telephone services became deregulated and other digital services became more popular, there has arisen the notion of delivery of digital data over cable TV systems in a portion of the bandwidth unused by the analog CATV programs. This gave rise to cable modems.
Video-on-demand services have been known in hotel television systems for several years. Video-on-demand services allow a user to select a program to view and have the video and audio data of that program transmitted to her television set. Examples of such systems include: U.S. Pat. No. 6,057,832 disclosing a video on demand system with a fast play and a regular play mode; U.S. Pat. No. 6,055,560 disclosing an interactive video-on-demand system that supports functions normally only found on a VCR such as rewind, stop, fast forward etc.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,055,314 which discloses a system for secure purchase and delivery of video content programs over distribution networks and DVDs involving downloading of decryption keys from the video source when a program is ordered and paid for; U.S. Pat. No. 6,049,823 disclosing an interactive video-on-demand to deliver interactive multimedia services to a community of users through a LAN or TV over an interactive TV channel; U.S. Pat. No. 6,025,868 disclosing a pay-per-play system including a high-capacity storage medium; U.S. Pat. No. 6,020,912 disclosing a video-on-demand system having a server station and a user station with the server stations being able to transmit a requested video program in normal, fast forward, slow, rewind or pause modes; U.S. Pat. No. 5,945,987 teaching an interactive video-on-demand network sytem that allows users to group together trailers to review at their own speed and then order the program directly from the trailer; U.S. Pat. No. 5,935,206 teaching a server that provides access to digital video movies for viewing on demand using a bandwidth allocation scheme that compares the number of requests for a program to a threshold and then, under some circumstances of high demand makes another copy of the video movie on another disk where the original disk does not have the bandwidth to serve the movie to all requesters; U.S. Pat. No. 5,926,205 teaching a video-on-demand system that provides access to a video program by partitioning the program into an ordered sequence of N segments and provides subscribers concurrent access to each of the N segments; U.S. Pat. No. 5,802,283 teaching a public switched telephone network for providing information from multimedia information servers to individual telephone subscribers via a central office that interfaces to the multimedia server(s) and receives subscriber requests and including a gateway for conveying routing data and a switch for routing the multimedia data from the server to the requesting subscriber over first, second and third signal channels of an ADSL link to the subscriber.
Video-on-demand on cable TV systems to receive requests from cable subsribers for video programs or services such as high speed internet access or access to T1 or other high speed digital telephony services have not yet completed development. Such systems receive upstream requests and deliver requested video programs with associated audio and other data, as well as bidirectional delivery of internet protocol packets from LAN or WAN sources coupled to the head end bidirectional delivery of telephony data packets to and from T1 or other high speed lines of the public service telephony network. A need has arisen for a video-on-demand service over cable TV systems as well as delivery of other services such as wideband internet and T1 telephony access over cable TV systems.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A genus of video-on-demand pull technology cable TV systems is defined herein. Each system includes one or more “pull multiplexers” and one or more video stream inputs and one or more transmitters or transceivers at the head end, and a plurality of customer premises distributed along the downstream transmission medium.
A “pull multiplexer” is defined as a head end “cherry picker” multiplexer that has circuitry and/or software which functions to, at least:
receive upstream program and/or service requests, typically video program requests or requests for internet access etc., from the customer premises (or at least some of them if an array of pull multiplexers are used to divide up the work);
map the requests to program identifier codes (hereafter PID) that correspond to PIDs that will be in data packets encoding the desired program(s) and any associated audio, graphic, text or other auxiliary data and, in some embodiments, communicate PIDs and other packet identifying data to one or more video servers, and, in some embodiments, WAN servers and T-carrier interface circuits, to cause them to output data encoding requested programs and “pushed” programs to be sent regardless of requests;
receive one or more streams of compressed data packets (typically MPEG II but any compression scheme may be used) encoding a plurality of programs and/or services (such as telephony or internet access) and cull out those packets that have program identifier codes, IP addresses or other packet identifier information in the packet headers that identify the requested program or service data in the payload of the packet as well as data packets associated with the requested program(s) and/or services encoding any other audio, graphic, text or other auxiliary data packets that are to be used with the the requested program or service;
assemble the data packets culled out from the input streams into one or more output streams with each output stream containing the data packets for multiple requested programs and/or services;
outputting one output stream to each transmitter, transceiver or modem coupled to the downstream medium for transmission on a “logical channel” and “subchannel” (“logical channel” means any data path which carries one or more sets of data, each logical channel being multiplexed or otherwise physically or logically separated from other data being transmitted to another entity or in another direction on another logical channel, each set of data being carried on a subchannel of a logical channel also being multiplexed in any known way from the other sets of data being transmitted on the same logical channel) such that each logical channel carries in its subchannels one or more components of one or more requested programs and/or services and wherein, in the preferred embodiment, the collection of all such logical channels and subchannels carries only requested program(s) and/or service(s) (in alternative embodiments, some of the program slots or subchannels in selected or predetermined logical channels will carry data of programs and/or services that have not been specifically requested but which are high demand and which almost always will have users such as CNN or ESPN); and
send downstream messages as to which channel(s) and subchannel(s) the program(s) and/or service(s) (in both requested and requested plus broadcast type embodiments) data will be transmitted on and the PIDs, IP addresses or other identifier information in the headers of the data packets that are to be used at the customer premises to filter out the requested programs and/or services and, in some embodiments, the broadcast high demand programs and/or services (in embodiments where there is not a shared downstream medium such as DSL lines to each customer, the filtering criteria can be dispensed with and the downstream messages only indicate which channels
Monta Peter Albert
Quinard Fabrice Michel Raymond
Rakib Selim Shlomo
Fish Ronald Craig
Luu Le Hien
Ronald Craig Fish A Law Corporation
Terayon Communication Systems, Inc.
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