Profile System for Cross-Device Media Playback Resumption
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face challenges in seamlessly interrupting and resuming media playback across multiple devices due to heterogeneity in media players, requiring specific usage conditions, registration, and authentication, which hinders smooth media consumption experiences.
Innovation Solution
A system that uses a profile system to monitor media data traffic and buffer content, allowing for anonymous access and seamless playback resumption across devices by storing and retrieving current playback information, enabling users to resume media from any device without re-authentication.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If media players are heterogeneous across devices with specific usage conditions, then device compatibility is improved, but user operation complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a profile system as an intermediary layer between users and heterogeneous media players. This profile system stores user preferences, playback history, and device configurations centrally, allowing users to interact with a unified interface regardless of the underlying device differences. The profile system mediates between the user's simple operations and the complex heterogeneous device environment, resolving the contradiction by shielding users from complexity while maintaining broad device compatibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The profile system serves multiple functions: it stores user preferences, manages playback state across devices, handles authentication, and coordinates between different media players. By creating a universal system that performs these diverse functions, the patent enables a single unified interface to work across heterogeneous devices without requiring users to learn device-specific operations, thus resolving the contradiction between versatility and ease of operation.
2Reliability
If registration and authentication are required for media playback, then system security is improved, but ease of operation deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs registration and authentication in advance by creating user profiles that are stored centrally. Once the profile is established, users can access media playback across multiple devices without repeated authentication. The preliminary action of setting up the profile system resolves the contradiction by establishing security credentials once, then allowing convenient access thereafter without compromising system security.
Solution Approach 2:
The profile system automatically manages authentication credentials and device registration without requiring users to manually authenticate on each device. The system self-services the authentication process by using stored profile information to automatically verify user identity and device permissions, maintaining security while eliminating the need for users to repeatedly enter credentials, thus resolving the contradiction between security and convenience.
3Speed
If media playback state is stored locally on each device, then data access speed is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the previously distributed local storage architecture into a centralized profile system that stores all playback state information in one location. Instead of each device maintaining separate local copies of user preferences and playback history, the system combines these into a unified central repository. This reduces system architecture complexity by eliminating redundant distributed storage while maintaining fast access through the centralized system's efficient data retrieval mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
A system, method, and computer program product are provided for media content playback management. In operation, a profile system receives media information and current playback information associated with media content being played on a first device including a first streaming software agent capable of monitoring media data traffic from a plurality of different streaming media sources and a first local buffer for buffering the media content. The profile system identifies a profile associated with a user of the first device. The profile system stores the media information and the current playback information in association with the profile associated with the user of the first device. The profile system receives a request to play the media content on a second device including a second streaming software agent capable of monitoring the media data traffic from the plurality of different streaming media sources and a second local buffer for buffering the media content. The profile system identifies that the second device corresponds to the profile associated with the user of the first device. The profile system identifies the current playback information for the media content. Moreover, the profile system sends the current playback information for the media content to the second device such that the second device is capable of resuming playback of the media content where playback of the media content on the first device stopped. The profile system allows for anonymous access to various media players.