Abstract: A multicast network system comprises a data network which provides a medium for data transfer. A media source having a control packet and media packets coupled to the data network broadcasts the control packet and the media packets to the data network and rebroadcasts the control packet in conjunction with the media packets to the data network. A media receiver is coupled to the network and receives the control packet and the media packets from the data network to process the control packet and the media packets to produce a media output.

Abstract: A data compression method which recognizes the adverse conditions of duochrominance-isoluminance and nonlinear color distribution. A mxn block of pixel data is examined to compute two colors and a bitmap which best represent the block generally using a luminance partitioning technique. The original data and the compressed data are examined to determine if the resultant decompresssed image will contain artifact associated with duochrominance-isoluminance or nonlinear color distribution. If these artifacts will occur in the decompressed data, the decompressed data is not used but rather the block is represented by storing the color of each pixel. This method produces compressed images of excellent quality.

Abstract: An adaptive compression/decompression method for color video data with an anti-aliasing mode. 4.times.4 blocks of pixel data are examined to determine which one of four compression techniques should be used on each block. User settable thresholds can be used to shift the types of compression used. Highest compression is obtained when more data is stored in run length blocks of single colors and lowest compression when more data is stored as two colors with a 32-bit bitmap for each 4.times.4 block. One type of compression used provides anti-aliasing.