AT&T Labs Research — Leading Invention, Driving Innovation

In an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) system, an IPTV server is configured to receive a request from an IPTV content storage device (CSD) to view a video stream. The IPTV server selects a set of peers for the IPTV CSD, and transmits the set of peers to the IPTV CSD. In the system, a capacity of a fiber to the node (FTTN) switch in a down linking direction is greater than or equal to a sum of a number of simultaneous viewers supported by the FTTN switch plus a number of viewers that receive video streams from peers in the same community.

A system and a method for implementing an energy-efficient multimedia messaging system to improve mobile device usability and maximize mobile device battery life. The disclosed system includes a hierarchical messaging system for multimedia content leveraging short message service (SMS), an embedded system-based new interface device, and the Internet capability of mobile network access devices which support programmatic control for a power optimization policy. This system reduces energy overhead in network access devices and improves the usability of the multimedia messaging service.

A layered syndicated feed or content is provided having layers defined according to a media type (e.g., text, graphic, audio, or video) wherein each layer has a plurality of levels such that each level provides either inclusive or exclusive content of the layer's media type in varying degrees of detail or depth. Furthermore, a system is provided for requesting and storing user and mobile device profiles indicative of the syndicated content layers and levels that the user is interested in receiving and that the user's mobile device is capable of receiving.

A mobile multimedia content aggregation and dissemination platform is provided that aims to automate the creation, collection, correlation, aggregation, and dissemination of RSS, ATOM or other syndicated-style data formats along with non-syndicated content for blogs and for searching by interested parties. Then non-syndicated content may be substantially any type of multimedia content that has not yet been edited or that has been edited. The system and method may receive data content that originated from a syndicated information source along with other data content that originated from a non-syndicated information source. The system and method convert both types of content into, at least, blog information and blog data. The blog information comprising, information that points to a storage location of the blog data. The exemplary method further enables a user to search the blog data regardless of whether the blog data originated from a syndicated data source or non-syndicated data source.

A method for providing multimedia data from at least one controllable multimedia source to a mobile device includes providing a request path from the mobile device to a mobile service platform, receiving a request from the mobile device, obtaining a device profile from the mobile device, authenticating the identity of a user of the mobile device, and determining a user profile in response to the user identity. The method further includes authorizing control and access to the at least one multimedia source, providing a control channel from the mobile service platform to at least one multimedia server, providing multimedia data delivery information to the at least one multimedia server, and providing multimedia data to the mobile device in response to the request via the at least one multimedia server.

Hardware assisted system and method for computing a visibility ordering of a set of primitives and rendering the set of primitives is described, comprising the steps of and means for locating primitives potentially in a layer and removing occluded primitives from the layer. The hardware assisted locating step further includes the steps of initializing hardware buffers, initializing a layer number, assigning the layer number to each primitive, extracting a subset of the primitives from the set of primitives assigned to the layer number, and storing the subset of primitives in a color buffer. The hardware assisted removing step further includes the steps of reading the color buffer to locate all primitives of the layer number, traversing a pixel array of the subset of primitives to obtain primitive ids and depth complexities, testing depth complexity for each primitive using a stencil buffer, removing those primitives from the layer number if the depth complexity greater than one, re-inserting the primitives with a depth complexity greater than one back into the set of primitives, rendering the primitives of the layer number, incrementing the layer number, determining if any primitives have been extracted from the set of primitives in the layer number, halting execution if no primitives have been removed from the layer number, and repeating all of the above steps.