Abstract: There is provided a system, method and software application that receives a data stream via a data network such as the Internet. The received data is recorded in a data storage device. The system stores various transcoding algorithms for a variety of playback devices and transfer networks. The recorded data is then transcoded into a format compatible with other devices or data transfer constraints. A user can interface with the system to input information particular to the other devices and transfers. This information is stored by the system and used to determine the transcoding algorithm best suited to the needs of the user based on the user input.

Abstract: A method and arrangement are disclosed for transmitting television programs via a plurality of channels, and an additional data service, for example, an Electronic Program Guide, via a selected television channel. While processing and displaying the program guide, prior art television receivers cannot continue the reproduction of a currently received TV program because the program is generally transmitted via a different channel. The invention provides a solution to this problem by duplicating a signal component representing, for example, the audio contents of the various television programs in said selected television channel. This allows customers to keep up with the service they were watching before, and to immediately return to the program if something of interest appears to happen. The invention is particularly applicable in Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) systems where each channel can accommodate a plurality of TV programs.

Abstract: Disclosed are a method and arrangement for accessing interactive audiovisual programs stored on a remote server (1) by a multimedia station (2). The audiovisual program is stored in the same format as it is stored on a CDi disc, i.e. in the form of sectors. Although based on the same data compression technology, the CDi video coding standard does not comply with the MPEG coding specification. Moreover, MPEG does not cover the handling of specific CDi features. In order to allow conventional CDi decoders to access remotely stored CDi applications via interactive networks (3,4), the interactive audiovisual program is transmitted as a private MPEG2 data stream, using the concept of MPEG's transport stream. The multimedia station comprises a network interface (7) having a circuit (72) which assembles the transport packets and applies the signal sectorwise to a "stripped" CDi player (5,6).