PVR Storage Allocation with Borrowing Mechanism
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current personal video recorders (PVRs) lack efficient methods for managing storage space among multiple users, leading to unequal allocation and potential loss or overwrite of recorded content, with no effective means to aggregate user capabilities for lending or borrowing storage resources.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system where PVRs allocate and re-allocate storage space among users based on predefined proportions, user preferences, and available free space, allowing for borrowing and lending of storage space to ensure collision-free recording and fair resource distribution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If storage space is shared among multiple users without allocation control, then device complexity is reduced, but reliability deteriorates due to risk of overwriting or losing recorded content
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the total storage space into separate allocated portions for each user. Each user receives a specific allocation of storage capacity, creating distinct segments that prevent one user's recordings from overwriting another user's content. This segmentation resolves the contradiction by maintaining simple shared access while ensuring reliable content protection through structured division of storage resources.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary allocation of storage space to each user before recording begins. By pre-assigning storage quotas and boundaries, the system ensures that users cannot exceed their allocated space or overwrite others' content. This preliminary structuring of storage rights and capacities prevents reliability issues while keeping the sharing mechanism simple.
2Reliability
If storage space is allocated to each user, then content protection reliability is improved, but device complexity increases due to allocation management
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service mechanisms where users can autonomously manage their own storage allocations, borrow additional space when needed, and return space when no longer required. The system automatically tracks borrowing and returns without requiring complex centralized management. This self-service approach maintains high content protection reliability while reducing the operational complexity of allocation management.
Solution Approach 2:
The storage allocation system is designed to be dynamic rather than static. Users can adjust their allocations, borrow space from available pools, and return space flexibly based on their needs. This dynamic structure allows the system to adapt to changing requirements automatically, maintaining reliability through continuous space management while avoiding the complexity of rigid predetermined allocations.
3Adaptability or versatility
If users can borrow storage space, then adaptability is improved, but device complexity increases due to lending and borrowing management
Solution Approach 1:
The patent incorporates feedback mechanisms that automatically track borrowing and lending transactions. The system monitors space borrowing, ensures returns occur when appropriate, and maintains accurate records of all transactions. This automated feedback loop provides real-time visibility into storage utilization and borrowing status, enabling high adaptability for users while keeping lending-borrowing management simple through systematic tracking and automatic enforcement of return conditions.
Data Source
AI summary
Automated personal video recording, including recording, for a group comprising a number of members, a show having a storage space requirement, in which each of the members has allocated storage space on a personal video recorder (“PVR”) optionally including free space, and apportioning the show's storage space requirement, including apportioning to each member an apportioned amount of the show's storage space requirement. When a member's apportioned amount of the show's storage space requirement exceeds the member's free space by a deficit amount: selecting, in dependence upon the deficit amount, one or more lenders; borrowing, in dependence upon the deficit amount, from the lenders for the group, at least one loan amount of storage space; and apportioning the loan amount among the members.