Abstract: Instances of data-storage media having pits and lands, such as individual DVDs or CDs, are manufactured by selectively illuminating a light-curable material to form cured regions corresponding to the lands. The selective illumination of the light-curable material can be implemented using mask-based illumination or selective laser illumination or both. The mask used in mask-based illumination can have one or more extra opaque portions and/or one or more extra transparent portions corresponding to false pits and/or false lands, respectively, where selective laser illumination is used to convert one or more false pits/lands produced during mask-based illumination into true pits/lands for the competed medium.

Abstract: A method and apparatus updates supplement information (SI) in a time-shifted multimedia program that includes a primary multimedia-content feed and one or more SI overlays. In one embodiment, the invention identifies spatial, temporal, and/or logical occurrences of supplemental information (SI) in a recorded program and replaces this potentially outdated information with SI that is either less time-sensitive and/or updated to be relevant to the playback time of the program. In another embodiment, SI overlays are identified by tags that are embedded into a multimedia program feed and stored (time-shifted) along with the feed by an enhanced digital video recorder (EDVR) set-top. The set-top decodes the stored feed, reads the tags to determine sources for replacement SI, retrieves the replacement SI from the sources, and creates updated overlays from the replacement SI. The set-top then replaces the original overlays with updated SI overlays and outputs the result to a display.

Abstract: A process and facility supports device-specific delivery of a multimedia object to an end user's device as a function of the device's capabilities, the transport interface to the device, and/or the viewing state and/or access privileges of the device's user with respect to the object or the user's relationship to an owner of the device and/or multimedia object.

Abstract: A process and facility supports recipient-specific customization of mass-duplicated tapes. Video from a master tape is passed through a VBI encoder whose output feeds two or more overlay units, each associated with a tape recorder. Recipient-specific watermarking instructions and address information for each tape are fed to the VBI encoder where they are encoded into the VBI of the video. Each overlay unit reads the VBI and decodes the address, and if relevant for that unit, applies the overlays to the video, which is recorded by its associated recording deck. Optionally, each tape and overlay unit includes a barcode that is scanned into a database where associations between tapes and the overlays are stored. Alternatively, high-density barcode labels that include the overlay instructions are printed and applied to tapes. The barcodes are scanned into the overlay units and applied following the receipt of a timecode or other trigger.

Abstract: An automated playlist chaser (APC) improves the recovery time and robustness of playlists to component failures and/or human errors in a content sourcing and editing environment. Following detection and correction of an error in a content sourcing subsystem controlled by a playlist, the APC retrieves a last known good playlist from a playlist archive and automatically builds a new playlist for resynchronization of the subsystem. Building the new playlist involves iteratively solving for the first new program segment entry in the new playlist and the new “on-air time,” “start-of message,” and “duration” attributes for the entry as a function of a reference time (e.g., the present time of day), the original on-air time for the entry, the subsystem recovery time, the APC processing time, and the queuing delay of the audio-video source for the program segment.