TiVo Corporation

Methods and system for providing content are disclosed. One method can comprise receiving a request for data at a first time, wherein the data comprises a first time duration, determining a buffer size based upon the first time duration, and determining a playback window based upon the determined buffer size and the first time. The method can also comprise synchronizing presentation of content on a plurality of devices.

Techniques and mechanisms described herein facilitate the storage of digital media recordings. According to various embodiments, a system is provided comprising a processor, a storage device, Random Access Memory (RAM), an archive writer, and a recording writer. The archive writer is configured to retrieve a plurality of small multimedia segments (SMSs) in RAM and write the plurality of SMSs into an archive container file in RAM. The single archive container file may correspond to a singular multimedia file when complete. New SMSs retrieved from RAM are appended into the archive container file if the new SMSs also correspond to the singular multimedia file. The recording writer is configured to flush the archive container file to be stored as a digital media recording on the storage device once enough SMSs have been appended by the archive writer to the archive container file to complete the singular multimedia file.

Mechanisms are provided to allow efficient delivery of content through a content delivery network (CDN) without taxing an origin server while maintaining fine grained location based access control. Requests to a CDN are augmented with quantized and non-quantized versions of location information. A CDN can use quantized location information in a URI to identify and return content if content corresponding to the URI is available in cache. If the content is not available in cache, the CDN can contact an origin server to obtain a result for the request using non-quantized location information. The origin server examines the non-quantized location information to determine whether to respond to the client request with content. The origin server examines the area corresponding to the quantized location information to determine whether the content should be cached at the CDN.

Access devices may receive signals over a network and calculate a frequency spectrum of the received signals. An analyzer system may collect the frequency spectrum data from multiple access devices, and based on the collected data, detect, identify, and locate sources of anomalies in a communication network.

Methods, systems, computer readable media, and apparatuses for providing enhanced content are presented. Data including a first program, a first caption stream associated with the first program, and a second caption stream associated with the first program may be received. The second caption stream may be extracted from the data, and a second program may be encoded with the second caption stream. The first program may be transmitted with the first caption stream including first captions and may include first content configured to be played back at a first speed. In response to receiving an instruction to change play back speed, the second program may be transmitted with the second caption stream. The second program may include the first content configured to be played back at a second speed different from the first speed, and the second caption stream may include second captions different from the first captions.

Mechanisms are provided for presenting a media location browsing interface to facilitate a media search and/or seek. A client device receives a media stream from a streaming server. This client device provides a media location browsing interface after receiving the media stream. This media location browsing interface includes a plurality of key frames representing locations along the media stream that are selectable at the client device. A seek request to play the media stream from a seek location corresponding to one of the plurality of key frames is captured. The client device begins playback of the media stream at the seek location.

Mechanisms are provided for character-based and image-based media content search and discovery. Character images or entity images are mapped to corresponding media content. Selection of an image or a portion of an image may trigger or search for corresponding media content or begin playback of relevant media content. Character images or entity images need not correspond to a primary program character or object but may correspond to minor characters or tangential entities depicted periodically on particular programs.

Speech recognition may be improved by generating and using a topic specific language model. A topic specific language model may be created by performing an initial pass on an audio signal using a generic or basis language model. A speech recognition device may then determine topics relating to the audio signal based on the words identified in the initial pass and retrieve a corpus of text relating to those topics. Using the retrieved corpus of text, the speech recognition device may create a topic specific language model. In one example, the speech recognition device may adapt or otherwise modify the generic language model based on the retrieved corpus of text.

Methods and system for providing content are disclosed. One method can comprise receiving a request for data at a first time, wherein the data comprises a first time duration, determining a buffer size based upon the first time duration, and determining a playback window based upon the determined buffer size and the first time. The method can also comprise synchronizing presentation of content on a plurality of devices.

One or more computing devices may be configured to identify information corresponding to a program change request associated with a multi-program data transmission. The information may comprise at least a link to a desired program within the multi-program data transmission. The one or more computing devices may communicate the link to the desired program to a client device over a specified time period. After the time period, the one or more computing devices may communicate the desired program to the client device using a single program data transmission. The single program data transmission may be derived from the multi-program data transmission.