Abstract: The portability, quality and integrity of optical storage media have made such media the dominant distribution mechanism for a wide variety of audio-visual entertainment including music, films, compilations of television series, and electronic games. The primary distribution being by an initial sale or rental, followed by re-rentals and re-sale. In the later scenarios the integrity or quality of the data stored within the optical storage medium can determine the users overall satisfaction with the audio-visual entertainment, commercial rental organization or commercial re-seller. As such a method of providing a verification or certification of the data within an optical storage medium prior to its return into the distribution chain would be extremely beneficial.

Abstract: The rapid proliferation of streamed audio-visual services to users via the Internet, especially fee-based services, has increased the importance for content providers in establishing, maintaining, improving and validating the quality of service and experience they provide to the subscribers or users of their services. Accordingly, there is provided a method of determining quality metric data at the user's display in response to a provided digital multimedia stream. The quality metric data being stored for subsequent transmission to a remote server for aggregation and correlation with other quality metric data and defect related data of provided digital multimedia streams to provide service and network providers with quantified data relating to the quality of experience of users of Internet based audio-visual services. As such the quality metric data may be applied to discrete or continuous audio-visual content facilitating quality determinations for streamed content.

Abstract: A method of grading a level of damage to digital data provides a scan of the digital data for errors therein. Based on the detected errors and predetermined data based on at least one of audio human perception and human visual perception a grade of plain quality is determined. The grade of plain quality is then provided of an output from the system for interpretation by a user or a subsequent system.