Set-Top Box Media Continuity System for Seamless Playback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users experience a time delay and potential content loss when switching from watching media on a portable electronic device via an over-the-top source to a set-top box, due to the delay in media content transmission and synchronization between broadcast and internet-based media sources.
Innovation Solution
A set-top box with a media continuity system that buffers media content and adjusts timestamps to ensure seamless continuity when the user returns home, using location determination and communication systems to synchronize media playback across devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If media content is transmitted from broadcast content source to set-top box and portable electronic device simultaneously, then users can access content on multiple devices, but timestamp synchronization becomes difficult causing content gaps when switching devices
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by detecting when a user is watching content on a portable device and proactively buffering the corresponding broadcast content in advance. The buffer is populated before the user potentially returns home, ensuring content is ready and timestamp-synchronized when switching devices, preventing content gaps without waiting for the switch to occur.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary buffering mechanism that mediates between the broadcast content source and the set-top box output. This buffer acts as a temporary storage intermediary, holding content with timestamp information until the user switches devices, allowing synchronization adjustments without direct real-time transmission between broadcast source and playback device.
2Reliability
If broadcast content is buffered in advance to ensure continuity, then content gaps are prevented, but memory resources are consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies partial action by buffering only the specific content that the user is currently watching on their portable device, rather than buffering all broadcast content. The buffer size is optimized to hold just enough content to bridge the transition period, avoiding excessive memory consumption while maintaining continuity for the relevant content.
Solution Approach 2:
Buffering is triggered preliminarily only when content is detected playing on a portable device, making the memory usage conditional and targeted rather than continuous and universal. This preliminary detection mechanism ensures memory is allocated only when needed for maintaining continuity.
3Measurement precision
If timestamp differences are calculated and applied in real-time, then synchronization accuracy improves, but processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses copying by storing content with its original timestamp information intact in the buffer. Instead of complex real-time timestamp calculation and adjustment during playback, the pre-buffered content with embedded timestamps is simply copied and played back, maintaining synchronization accuracy through data replication rather than complex processing.
Data Source
AI summary
A set-top box and a method of operating the same are provided. The set-top box, for example, may include, but is not limited to, a communication system configured to receive media content from a broadcast content source and communicate with a personal electronic device, and a media continuity system configured to receive, from the communication system, an indication that a user is watching media content through an over the top source on the personal electronic device, buffer the media content from the broadcast content source in a memory, determine, when the set-top box receives a request to play the media content, a difference between a timestamp associated with the media content as broadcast by the over the top source and the media content as broadcast by the broadcast content source, and output the media content using the buffer based upon the difference in the timestamp when the user returns home.