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Streaming Patent Buoys RealNetworks
rishimathew writes writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that RealNetworks recently received a patent for a specific way to stream multimedia content over the internet. From the article: "The patent, which is described as being for a 'multimedia communications system and method for providing audio on demand to subscribers' (No. 6,985,932), describes the idea of permitting a PC user to play back audio, video and other information on a PC. RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted "intelligent" streaming of data in potentially congested networks."
By Intelligent streaming, they mean it'll take over your machine and feed you adware AFTER getting the run-around on how to download the free version and signing away your firstborn, that is.
Am I bitter? Yeah. Real was fairly innovative in the day and though Media Player had its part in shrinking the marketshare, it wasn't like Real didn't get pushy and lamer after a while. How's that OSS deal they had (was it helixcode?) going nowadays anyway?
In other news, I wouldn't be surprised if the patent actually pertains to a streaming download occasionally interrupted by the word "Buffering" followed by 3 ellipses.
Good point. From the NAS Documentation:
In a client/server architecture, network transfer delays can cometimes make the arrival of data less predictable than if it were coming from a physical device. This can result in underruns (data not arriving in time) or overruns (more data arriving than there is room for) if the delays are sufficiently large. If an underrun or overrun occurs, the affected element is "Paused" until more data or space becomes available. To avoid pauses, applications can control the amount of data that is kept for each input and output element and can request notices whenever an input begins to run out of data or an output has to buffer up too much data.
How does that fail to qualify as prior art?