Real-time participation within a media presentation is disclosed. A participant overlay may be generated by preprocessing a media presentation captured in real time with a camera to extract a time-variant metadata stream associated with one or more interactive regions depicted in the media presentation. The participant overlay includes simulated physics, which may include boundaries of the interactive regions defined in accordance with content in said media presentation. A participant's interaction with said media presentation through the interactive regions may be captured and combined with the media presentation for display on a display. The interaction may comprise a user action upon one or more elements in the media presentation, a user action expressed in the media presentation through an avatar, or a user action in said media presentation in connection with a game element.

Systems and methods of managing H.264 compliant video that lacks B Frames include decoding without the use of a significant video frame buffer. This variant of the H.264 standard may include a flag indicating that the video does not include B Frames. The video may be used in applications, such as computer games, in which processing of B Frames introduces undesirable lag.

Systems and methods are provided for cloud gaming. One system includes a plurality of computing resources in one or more data centers. The plurality of computing resources is configured to execute instances of games for client devices that are remote from the one or more data centers. Each instance for an executable game is associated with a processor, a graphics processing unit (GPU), and memory. Memory is used for storing video frames generated for the executable game. The video frames are compressed for video game streaming to one or more client devices. The executable game is associated with video, audio and input channels for said one or more client devices to control interactivity of operation of the executable game during said video game streaming. The cloud gaming system implements at least one channel driver to facilitate I/O processing for the one or more client devices when executed by the computing resources of the one or more data centers.

A method of and system for handling latency issues encountered in producing real-time entertainment such as games of skill synchronized with live or taped televised events is described herein. There are multiple situations that are dealt with regarding latencies in receiving a television signal with respect to real-time entertainment based on the unfolding games played along with the telecasts. Systemic delays, arbitrarily imposed delays of a broadcast signal and variances in the precise broadcast times of taped television programs have to be equalized so as to provide fair entertainment.

A method of and system for handling latency issues encountered in producing real-time entertainment such as games of skill synchronized with live or taped televised events is described herein. There are multiple situations that are dealt with regarding latencies in receiving a television signal with respect to real-time entertainment based on the unfolding games played along with the telecasts. Systemic delays, arbitrarily imposed delays of a broadcast signal and variances in the precise broadcast times of taped television programs have to be equalized so as to provide fair entertainment.

A video server is configured to provide streaming video to players of computer games over a computing network. The video server can provided video of different games to different players simultaneously. This is accomplished by rendering several video streams in parallel using a single GPU. The output of the GPU is provided to graphics processing pipelines that are each associated with a specific client/player and are dynamically allocated as needed. A client qualifier may be used to assure that only clients capable of presenting the streaming video to a player at a minimum level of quality receive the video stream.

A video server is configured to provide streaming video to players of computer games over a computing network. The video server can provided video of different games to different players simultaneously. This is accomplished by rendering several video streams in parallel using a single GPU and shared memory. The output of the GPU is provided to graphics processing pipelines that are each associated with a specific client/player and are dynamically allocated as needed. A client qualifier may be used to assure that only clients capable of presenting the streaming video to a player at a minimum level of quality receive the video stream.

A video server is configured to provide streaming video to players of computer games over a computing network. The video server can provided video of different games to different players simultaneously. This is accomplished by rendering several video streams in parallel using a single GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). The output of the GPU is provided to graphics processing pipelines that are each associated with a specific client/player and are dynamically allocated as needed. A client qualifier may be used to assure that only clients capable of presenting the streaming video to a player at a minimum level of quality receive the video stream. Video frames provided by the video server optionally include overlays added to the output of the GPU. These overlays can include voice data received from another game player.

Systems and methods for executing multiple video games, or other sources of video, include a cloud game execution environment in which each game application is executed on the same operating system but within a virtual I/O shell. The virtual I/O shell includes virtual video, audio and input channels that allow each game application to operate as if it had dedicated drivers. In some embodiments, the systems and methods of the invention are used to provide video streams to a plurality of clients over the internet.

A method of and system for handling latency issues encountered in producing real-time entertainment such as games of skill synchronized with live or taped televised events is described herein. There are multiple situations that are dealt with regarding latencies in receiving a television signal with respect to real-time entertainment based on the unfolding games played along with the telecasts. Systemic delays, arbitrarily imposed delays of a broadcast signal and variances in the precise broadcast times of taped television programs have to be equalized so as to provide fair entertainment.