Abstract: A personal recorder/playback system (10) includes a recording agent (32) configured to transparently receive multiple audio/visual streams from analog and/or digital sources. The streams are temporarily stored in queues (52,54) for subsequent analysis. The streams, after analysis, are either discarded, stored permanently in an audio/visual collection (48,50), or used to improve the quality of previously stored streams in the collection. The recording agent (32) provides features such as virtual channels (42) and a “top-ten” list (38) of most popular stored audio/visual streams.

Abstract: The invention relates to a method of caching data stored in allocation units of a memory (102), preferably a harddisk drive system, of which retrieval incurs a performance penalty. An example of this is data in a spare sector (215), located in a spare area (210) on the hard disk platter (200). The cache memory (103) is, however, a precious commodity. The need for memory space may be reduced by only caching data in spare sectors in which data belonging to a file that is retrieved is stored. Also the impact of other kinds of causes of performance penalties may be solved in this way, like those caused by soft defects and fragmentation of files.

Abstract: Consumer electronic devices that run on a battery or an accumulator—i.e. particularly portable applications such as mobile phones, laptops or MPEG players or recorders-require the management of power consumption. They consist essentially of a host and a storage medium like a disk or means for receiving a storage medium like a disk drive that are coupled with an interface. Power management is very important because long battery life enhances user convenience. According to the invention, it is determined whether it is more efficient either to leave the disk drive in the idle mode or to switch the drive to standby until the next data request appears. The disk drive is entered into the most efficient power mode. The time until the next request is determined by the host.

Abstract: Method of processing data of at lease one data stream, data processing module for processing at a of at least one data stream, data processing system comprising such module, computer program product, data storage system ID and it is proposed to dynamically distribute available stream IDs. The proposed concept provides for indicating a type of data stream, providing and/or handling a set a stream ID from the set of stream IDs to the data stream depending on the type of data stream. In a preferred embodiment, it is proposed to reserve one stream ID for an audio-video request, characterized by having no error handling time available. A further stream ID may be reserved for best effort requests. Still further streams IDs may not be reserved but are freely available for pending error handling procedures, such as time-sliced error handling procedures.

Abstract: A system for hard disk drives that prevents the host from receiving an unrecoverable error whilst reading an erroneous track or sector resulting from a sudden power failure, i.e. from an unexpected power removal. The system has to behave in real-time, therefore a known lengthy error recovery procedure is not acceptable. According to the invention the solution saves the status information, and possibly the data, of the hard disk drive system in a non-volatile memory. Thus the status information, and possibly data, is still available when the system is restarted. The non-volatile memory might be a magnetic (MRAM), a battery-backed static (SRAM) or a Ferro-electric random access memory (FeRAM). The invention is especially used for audio/video hard disk drive systems such as personal video recorders (PVR) or set-top boxes with storage capabilities. The embodiment which has the data stored in a non-volatile memory improves the data reliability of the system and can thus also be used for PC applications.

Abstract: A scanning device for scanning data-carrying disks. The disks include a magnetisable layer to and from which data is written and read using a magnetic transducer, such as a Giant Magneto-Resistive (GMR) transducer. Positioning of the transducer over a data track is achieved by optical tracking using a land/groove structure, and positioning of the transducer with respect to the optical tracking system by means of a reference beam transmitted through the disk.