Abstract: A method that communicates a request from a first device to a proximally located second device for a movie residing in storage associated with the second device, the request communicated over a communications network, responsive to the request, receives the movie from the second device over the communications network, presents a menu on a screen corresponding to the first device, the menu comprising playback options to enable a user to manipulate playback and rewind of the movie, and responsive to user selection of one of the playback options, presents the movie on the screen.

Abstract: A system and method for determining the characteristics of a device coupled to a client device are disclosed. A method, according to one embodiment, includes driving a display device with a first video output signal formatted according to a first video interface specification; responsive to driving the display device, soliciting user input based on information included in the first video output signal; determining a characteristic of the display device based on the user input; and driving the display device according to the determined characteristic.

Abstract: Receiving a video stream in a transport stream comprising a plurality of compressed pictures, wherein information in the video stream includes plural data fields comprising: a first data field corresponding to a location in the video stream of a potential splice point, wherein the first data field identifies a location in the video stream after the location of the received information; a second data field corresponding to decompressed pictures yet to be output (DPYTBO) by a video decoder at the identified potential splice point (IPSP) when the video decoder decompresses the video stream, wherein the second data field is a number corresponding to the DPYTBO by the video decoder at the IPSP; and a third data field corresponding to pictures with contiguous output times (WCOT), wherein the third field corresponds to a set of pictures WCOT of the DPYTBO by the video decoder at the IPSP.

Abstract: A first sequence of pictures may be partitioned into plural representations, each of the plural representations may be encoded independently of each other with a common time base, a first portion of the plural encoded representations may be provided based on a first network condition, the first portion having a first bit-rate, and a second portion of the plural encoded representations may be provided having a second bit-rate different than the first bit-rate, wherein a switch from providing the first portion to providing the second portion is responsive to a second network condition different than the first network condition.

Abstract: An apparatus for facilitating reception of multiple representations of a video signal. In one embodiment, the apparatus includes a mechanism for receiving plural representations of the video signal corresponding to plural decimated versions of the video signal, associating pictures of the received plural representations of the video signal, and outputting pictures corresponding to information from associated pictures in accordance with a relative temporal order.