A packet converter according to an embodiment is mountable on a digital broadcast receiver. The packet converter includes: a variable-length packet acquirer configured to acquire a variable-length packet acquired by receiving digital broadcast signals; an analyzer configured to analyze at least a header between the header and a payload of the variable-length packet; a packet reassembler configured to reassemble, from the variable-length packet, a plurality of transport stream (TS) packets each having a TS header, wherein the packet reassembler is configured to set a value of a packet ID (PID) in the TS header based at least on an analysis result of the header of the variable-length packet; and a TS packet outputter configured to output the plurality of TS packets.

A method of a reception apparatus for processing control information, reception apparatus, and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium are provided. In the method, content is received from a content source. A display is controlled to display the received content. The control information is received during the display of the received content. The control information includes location information indicating a location of application information. The application information includes an application control document. The application information is retrieved using the location information based on a change in the control information. The application control document is loaded and the display is controlled in accordance with the application control document.

Methods and apparatus for providing an alternate content delivery mechanism available to content-based network users. In one embodiment, the network comprises a cable television network, and subscribers are able to retrieve requested content from one or more other subscriber's storage medium and without going outside the cable network (or accessing the network core in any significant capacity) using a peer-to-peer (P2P) network protocol. Using this approach, bandwidth consumption is advantageously pushed out to the edge of the network from the core, also obviating content requests outside the network (e.g., to third-party servers on the Internet). Methods of operating the aforementioned P2P network, and various business paradigms relating thereto, are also disclosed.

A device may be configured to signal information using watermarks. A device may be configured to determine an identifier associated with an address of a resource associated with multimedia content and embed the identifier in a signal representing multimedia content. A device may be configured to receive a multimedia signal, parse an identifier associated with an address of a resource from the multimedia signal, generate a query including the identifier, and receive supplemental content in response to the query.

A system and method for a system for communicating with a user device includes a broadcast management system generating content channel data signals. The system also includes a software download manager in communication with the broadcast management system. The software download manager generates an announcement file and a download resolution file. The download manager communicates the announcement file. The user device has user device identifier data and receives the download resolution file in response to the announcement file and stores the software image in the user device in response to the download resolution file.

Disclosed herein is a reception apparatus including: a reception portion configured to receive AV content; a trigger acquisition portion configured to acquire trigger information for operating an application program to be executed in interlocked relation to the AV content; a table acquisition portion configured to acquire a correspondence table associating a command for controlling the operation of the application program with a valid time of the command; and a control portion configured such that when the time acquired from the trigger information as indicative of the progress of the AV content satisfies a predetermined condition of validity in reference to the valid time of the command on the basis of the acquired correspondence table, the control portion controls the operation of the application program in accordance with the command being valid.

A data-processing system facilitates processing a data stream to assist other devices to pre-fetch elements of the data stream, out-of-sequence, for uninterrupted playback. During operation, the system can receive a data file, and segments the data file into a sequence of content objects. The system then determines a target content object that is to be processed out-of-sequence, and a corresponding source content object. The system then inserts a reference to the target content object, into the source content object, and stores the sequence of content objects. A client device can disseminate interest to obtain the data stream's content objects. Upon receiving a content object, the client device can determine whether the content object includes a reference to other content objects. If so, the client device can disseminate interests for these referenced content objects.

Methods and systems for hybrid push-based media streaming of encoded video (or media) content grouped into video segment (or chunk) files to one or more user devices are described, where push notices are provided from a manifest server to subscribing user devices over a persistent low bandwidth connection when the video segment files are ready to be viewed. The video segment files may be downloaded by the user devices from segment servers to the user devices via a separate HTTP high bandwidth streaming connection, or other form of separate connection. In addition, unique, personalized, or additional content may be inserted in the push notices and viewed by the user devices without impacting video playback performance.

A method, non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, and reception apparatus for processing one or more triggers associated with audio/video (A/V) content, and an information providing apparatus for providing the one or more triggers. The method includes receiving by the reception apparatus the A/V content and a first trigger associated with the received A/V content. Further, the reception apparatus retrieves a trigger parameters table (TPT), associated with the A/V content, from a TPT server identified in the received first trigger. The TPT defines at least one event associated with the A/V content and defines, for each of the at least one event, a parameter used to perform a process and corresponding to the respective event.

In one example, a device for retrieving media data includes one or more processors implemented in circuitry and configured to parse system level information of a media bitstream encapsulating a video elementary stream, the system level information indicating that the video elementary stream includes one or more supplemental enhancement information (SEI) messages and payload types for each of the SEI messages, extract the one or more SEI messages and the payload types from the system level information, and send the one or more SEI messages and the payload types to one or more other processing units of the device.