Disclosed are a method and apparatus for recognizing advertisement plug-ins, relating to the field of computer technologies. The method comprises: searching for files related to application plug-ins; based on feature vectors of feature dimensions in a feature vector set of a predetermined advertisement, scanning the files related to the application plug-ins, and calculating feature vector similarity between data in each file and the feature vector in each feature dimension; calculating an advertisement similarity of a current application plug-in according to the feature vector similarity of each feature dimension and a feature recognition weight of the feature dimension; comparing the advertisement similarity with a threshold, and determining whether the application plug-in is an advertisement plug-in according to the comparison result. The method has the advantageous effects that a perfect feature recognition rule is involved, and there is a superior feature matching and recognition capability for obfuscated advertisement software codes.

A system, apparatuses and methods are provided to download and process data and other content streamed over a wide area network using one or more dynamically fetched, material specific, data handlers (e.g., download assistants). A download assistant fetches a data stream from a remote location and processes the streamed data iteratively using buffers and multi-threaded processes through the decoder (e.g., codec), allowing source material-specific processing of the data as it is streamed from one or more download sources as well as content-indifferent and platform-indifferent decoding. To minimize versioning issues, payload construction for secure delivery is simplified to packing and encrypting a directory tree containing any number of files or other digital media into an archive and, when needed, dividing a payload into multiple files or archives with a descriptor that lists the archives.

In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, an information handling system for deployment of a streaming application to a streaming application environment comprising the information handling system and one or more target systems may include computer-readable media for storing a library of one or more sequenced applications and entitlement data associated with the one or more sequenced applications and a processor communicatively coupled to the computer-readable media. The processor may be configured to communicate a query for an entitlement to the sequenced application to a digital assets entitlement system server, responsive to a determination that an entitlement exists for the streaming application environment to the sequenced application, receive the sequenced application from the digital assets entitlement system server, and deploy and provision the sequenced application to the one or more target systems via application streaming.

A system that incorporates the subject disclosure may use, for example, a method for sending a set-top box an identification of the media player, receiving operational instructions from the set-top box according to the emulator executed by the set-top box that emulates a user interface of the media player by presenting a representation of the media player in a graphical user interface, and transmitting media content to the set-top box according to the operational instructions. The emulator can be supplied to the set-top box by way of a multimedia system communicatively coupled to the set-top box. The user interface presented by the set-top box by way of the emulator substantially mimics functions of the media player. Additional embodiments are disclosed.

Systems and methods, including computer software adapted to perform certain operations, can be implemented for remotely defining security data for authorizing access to data on a client device. Permission indicators are associated with a sequence of instructions, and a protected activity is associated with one or more of the permission indicators and with an instruction within the sequence of instructions. The one or more permission indicators and the sequence of instructions are provided to a remote device. The remote device determines whether execution of the instruction is permitted based, at least in part, on the one or more permission indicators, and the remote device performs the protected activity if execution of the instruction is permitted.

Disclosed are various embodiments for facilitating uninterrupted playback of video streams using lower quality cached files. A video file corresponding to an entirety of a video content feature encoded at a first quality is obtained. A video stream corresponding to the video content feature encoded at a second quality higher than the first quality is then obtained. The video stream is rendered for playback on a display. In response to detecting an unavailability of the video stream at a particular time in the video content feature, the video file is rendered for playback on the display in place of the video stream and commences at the particular time in the video content feature.

Data processing engines are provided that include an electronic display, a decoding functionality selector, a decoding functionality generator in communication with the decoding functionality selector, and a decoding functionality verifier, each configured as described anywhere herein. Related methods of automatically constructing platform-independent decoders for encoded digital data encoded in particular formats are also provided as described anywhere herein.

The server system transmits, from a virtualized third-party application to a client device, an instruction to open a media resource from a content distribution network, the media resource comprising a plurality of video segments, each video segment of the plurality of video segments having video segment data and metadata. The server system receives, from the client device, first metadata for a first video segment of the plurality of video segments, without receiving first video segment data for the first video segment. The server system generates a recreated representation of the first video segment using the first metadata. The virtualized third-party application generates a transformed version of the recreated representation of the first video segment. The server system transmits, to the client device, an instruction to play the first video segment, wherein the instruction is based on the transformed version of the recreated representation of the first video segment.

Methods and apparatus to identify streaming sessions are disclosed. A disclosed apparatus for identifying streaming sessions includes an encoder to generate an identifier corresponding to a media file of an advertisement, a detector to determine a presence of the identifier in the advertisement presented at a media presentation device, a timing analyzer to determine a time at which the advertisement was presented, and an associator. The associator is to compare the identifier and the time to a streaming session log from a streaming service provider, identify a streaming session in which the advertisement associated with the identifier was presented at the time based on the comparison, and associate a panelist identifier corresponding to the media presentation device with a streaming session identifier corresponding to the streaming session.

A method of playing out media from a media engine run on a receiving apparatus, the method comprising: at the receiving apparatus, receiving a media data structure comprising audio or video content formatted in a plurality of layers, including at least a first layer comprising the audio or video content encoded according to an audio or video encoding scheme respectively, and a second layer encapsulating the encoded content in one or more media containers according to a media container format; determining that at least one of the media containers further encapsulates runnable code for processing at least some of the formatting of the media data structure in order to support playout of the audio or video content by the media engine; running the code on a code engine of the receiving apparatus in order to perform the processing of the media data structure for input to the media engine.