Abstract: Disclosed herein are system, apparatus, article of manufacture, method and/or computer program product embodiments, and/or combinations and sub-combinations thereof, for a media device operating on a first network that can detect and switch media service to a second network to maintain access of a desired service quality. The media device can cause a presentation of the recommended second network, and receive a selection (e.g., user input) of the second network before the switch. The recommendation can be user-initiated or occur while accessing service without user initiation. The recommendation of the second network can be based on: a signal quality of the second network and/or the capabilities of the device providing the second network; a correlation of characteristics that indicate that stored credentials of a first network can be reused in another network; a security level of the first network; and/or platform capabilities of the media device.

Abstract: The invention described herein improves and expedites compressed video data delivery by providing systems and methods for transcoding and pass through on a sub-picture level. For example, in MPEG embodiments described herein, transcoding and compressed video data pass through may occur on a macroblock or slice level. This permits portions of a picture that need no rate reduction to be passed through without transcoding. The invention may also implement pass through on a picture by picture basis. Accordingly, the invention may determine transcoding or pass through for each picture or picture subregion. Thus, systems and methods described herein provide flexible compressed video data transcoding and pass through, as determined by varying bit rate demands of compressed video data transmission.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for dynamically allocating bandwidth to each encoder in an ensemble of video encoders whose output bit streams share a single communications channel. In accordance with the present invention, the channel bandwidth is allocated to the individual encoders in the ensemble in such a way that differences in a quality measure among the decoders are reduced. The quality measure includes a term that behaves like a peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and a term that measures the "masking effect" in a video signal. The "masking effect" results because an encoded frame with a high visual complexity masks coding artifacts from the viewer when it is decoded and displayed.

Abstract: Successive frames in a video sequence are encoded by a video encoder. The bits are apportioned among successive frames to maximize overall perceived video quality when the encoded video sequence is decoded and displayed. The ongoing allocation process is constrained by the need to avoid decoder buffer exception, i.e., buffer underflow and overflow conditions, at the decoder.