Method for automatically switching television channels or other content sources. The method may be used with any electronic media to facilitate switching between channels or other content sources based on events or other occurrences in non-viewed channels, such as but not limited to switching channels based on sporting event occurrences (goals, ending of game, etc.), news event occurrence (breaking news, health tips, etc.), and other any number of other identifiable events.

A system that incorporates teachings of the subject disclosure may include, for example, obtaining a group of facial objects detected from an image captured by a camera coupled with a media device where the facial objects correspond to a plurality of users, determining authentication information for each of the plurality of users based on the facial objects, and providing the authentication information to a group of content service systems for enabling the media device to access aggregated media services from the group of content service systems. Other embodiments are disclosed.

A network test instrument is operable to conduct sweep tests with a cable modem termination system having a distributed architecture. Through signaling performed via a telemetry channel between the network test instrument and a sweep server, the network test instrument can initiate the sweep test. The sweep server communicates with the cable modem termination system to facilitate the sweep test between the network test instrument and the cable modem termination system.

An information processing apparatus, the information processing apparatus executing an information processing method comprising: receiving a request of image data from an external terminal; specifying, based on the request, a vehicle that provides image capturing data to generate the image data; specifying a parameter concerning a communication path to be used by the specified vehicle to transmit the image capturing data to the information processing apparatus; and transmitting the specified parameter to the specified vehicle.

Embodiments of the present method comprise activating a data recording component on the computing device to receive information relating to the environment of the computer user and executing a quality check module in the computing device operative to analyse the environment of the computer user. The quality check module performs the steps of: assessing a received signal from the data recording component against a predetermined quality metric to ascertain if an informational content of the received signal meets a predetermined minimum quality to permit computer user behavioural data to be collected therefrom, determining and executing a responsive action where the received signal does not satisfy the quality metric, and initiating a computer user behavioural data collection process to computer user collect behavioural data during the interaction between the computer user and the computing device where the received signal satisfies the quality metric.

A method includes evaluating a bandwidth capacity of an uplink between a first customer premises equipment device and a network node of a multimedia distribution network. The method includes receiving a message at the first customer premises equipment device from the network node, the message indicating a request for multimedia content by a second customer premises equipment device, and instructing the first customer premise equipment device to provide the multimedia content to the second customer premise equipment device. The method includes transmitting a portion of the multimedia content from the first customer premises equipment device to the second customer premises equipment device. The method further includes, when the bandwidth capacity of the uplink is greater than a threshold, transmitting the multimedia content from the first customer premises equipment device to a first set of helper virtual peers selected based on the bandwidth capacity.

Techniques for delivering video content are provided. A video distribution service maintains associations of viewer devices that have portions of specific items of video content. As new viewer devices, which lack the specific video content, make requests for the specific items of video content from the video distribution system, the video distribution system identifies a viewer device from which a portion of the item of video content may be acquired. Viewer devices having the requested content are identified by comparing distances between the locations of the requestor device and the other viewer devices of the plurality of viewers to a distance threshold. The first portion of a first item of video content is obtained from a source viewer device and a second portion of the first item of video content is obtained from the video distribution system. Other embodiments are disclosed.

A camera video transmission and playback system includes a camera and a viewing device. The camera generates and records first video data including a plurality of image frames with time stamps synchronized on an external network, and simultaneously transmits the first video data to the viewing device via the external network. The viewing device displays the first video data transmitted from the camera via the external network, simultaneously records the first video data as second video data, and periodically calculates a round trip time in packet transmission to and from the camera. When receiving a marker assigning command from the viewing device via the external network, the camera assigns a marker to one of the plurality of image frames with a time stamp indicating a time corrected based on the round trip time in the first video data that is captured by and is being recorded in the camera.

A transmission device encodes content data, divides the encoded content data into a plurality of pieces of transmission data, and transmits the pieces to, through a plurality of uploaders and a plurality of networks corresponding to the plurality of uploaders, a distribution device configured to perform content distribution.

Introduced here are systems to manage and discover a processing offloader. A first multimedia device may identify a processing offloader in a networked environment. A first multimedia device may determine that a bandwidth of a second multimedia device in the networked environment falls below a threshold bandwidth, indicating that the second multimedia device may process instructions and render multimedia information with increased latency or delay. Based on this determination, the first multimedia device may forward instructions from the second multimedia device to the processing offloader for the processing offloader to process and render multimedia information on behalf of the second multimedia device based on the received instructions. The first multimedia device may forward rendered multimedia information from the processing offloader to the second multimedia device, and the second multimedia device may output the rendered multimedia information to an output device.