Method and apparatus for distributing multimedia to remote clients

Abstract

Video and audio signals are streamed to remote viewers that are connected to a communication network. A host server receives an originating video and audio signal that may arrive from a single source or from a plurality of independent sources. The host server provides any combination of the originating video and audio signals to viewers connected to a communication network. A viewer requests the host server provide a combination of video and audio signals from the host server. The host server transmits an instruction set to be executed by the viewer. The instruction set causes the viewer to transmit parameters to the host user, including parameters relating to the processing capabilities of the viewer. The host server then transmits multimedia data to the viewer according to the received parameters. A plurality of viewers may be simultaneously connected to the host server. Each of the plurality of viewers may configure the received video and audio signals independent of any other viewer and may generate alerts based on the video and audio content.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation of, and incorporates by reference in its entirety, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 652,113, filed on Aug. 29, 2000.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] 1. Field of the Invention [0003] The invention relates to devices and systems for communicating over a network. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and apparatus for streaming a multimedia signal to remote viewers connected to a communication network. [0004] 2. Description of the Related Art [0005] The constantly increasing processing power available in hardware devices such as personal computers, personal digital assistants, wireless phones and other consumer devices allows highly complex functions to be performed within the device. The hardware devices can perform complex calculations in order to implement functions such as spreadsheets, word processing, database management, data input and data output. Common forms of data output in...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The invention is about a way to watch video and hear audio in real-time streaming form. The system adapts to different viewers and their hardware devices, so that no one viewer has a slow connection or different hardware. The viewer also has control over the images they see."

Problems solved by technology

The constantly increasing processing power available in hardware devices such as personal computers, personal digital assistants, wireless phones and other consumer devices allows highly complex functions to be performed within the device.

The processing capabilities of the hardware as well as the display capabilities limit the amount of information displayed and the quality of the display to levels below that typically available from a personal computer.

The volumes of data and image files generated within any individual personal computer provide limited utility unless the files can be distributed.

Such mechanical file transfers are not particularly efficient and may be limited by the capacity of the transfer medium.

Of course, the cost of the communication link is proportional to the available information bandwidth.

The distribution of captured real-time video signals over a network presents several problems.

For example, there is no flexibility in the distribution of files to various users.

The use of JPEG encoding can compress the size of the graphic image file but, depending on the graphic resolution selected by the host, the image file may still be very large.

The network connection at the host is an initial bottleneck to efficient file transfer.

If the host sends files to the network using only a phone modem connection to transfer multiple megabyte files, no viewer will be able to display the video and audio signals in a manner resembling real-time streaming video.

A viewer with a phone modem connection will not be able to transfer high-resolution images at a speed sufficient to support real-time streaming video.

However, the effect of capturing low-resolution images to enable the most primitive system's access to the images is to degrade the performance of a majority of viewers.

Additionally, the images may need to be saved in such a low resolution that all detail is lost from the images.

Degradation of the images, therefore, is not a plausible solution.

Another problem encountered is the inability of all users to support the same graphical image format selected by the host.

Most personal computers are able to support the JPEG image format; however, network-enabled wireless phones or personal digital assistants may not be able to interpret the JPEG image format.

Additionally, the less sophisticated hardware devices may not incorporate color displays.

Finally, in such video distribution systems, the viewer has no control over the images.

Further, the viewer is unable to control such parameters as compression of the transmitted data and the frame rate of video transmission.

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