System And Method For Delivering AV Content

Abstract

A method of delivering audiovisual content to a viewer includes a controller obtaining content from a plurality of sources wherein the obtained content is in a format associated with the source of the content; converting the content to an intermediate format; storing the converted content; determining a communication interface between the controller and at least one of a plurality of viewer destinations; and transmitting the converted content to the at least one of a plurality of viewer destinations in a second format wherein the second format is associated with the determined communication interface.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of delivering audiovisual content to a viewer, the method comprising:
 a controller obtaining content from a plurality of sources wherein the obtained content is in a format associated with the source of the content;   converting the content to an intermediate format;   storing the converted content;   determining a communication interface between the controller and at least one of a plurality of viewer destinations; and   communicating the converted content to the at least one of a plurality of viewer destinations in a second format wherein the second format is associated with the determined communication interface.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the obtained content is one or more of a high resolution file, a high quality linear stream and an adaptive bit rate (ABR) stream. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the intermediate format has a superset format associated therewith. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3 , wherein superset format includes bit rates, resolutions, captions, encryption, device optimized format and ABR manifests. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the interface includes at least one of ATSC 1.0 over the air (OTA), ATSC 3.0 linear broadcast, ATSC 3.0 non-real time file broadcast, unicast delivery and external over the top (OTP): 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 communicating with a delivery decision module; and   obtaining delivery format from the module for the content being communicated to the viewer.   
     
     
         7 . A system for delivering audiovisual content to a viewer, the system comprising:
 a plurality of sources containing audiovisual content;   a controller for:
 obtaining audiovisual content from the plurality of sources wherein the obtained content is in a format associated with the source of the content; 
 converting the audiovisual content to an intermediate format; 
 storing the converted audiovisual content; 
 determining a communication interface between the controller and at least one of a plurality of viewer destinations; and 
 transmitting the converted audiovisual content to the at least one of a plurality of viewer destinations in a second format wherein the second format is associated with the determined communication interface. 
   
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 7 , further comprising:
 a receiver at each viewer destination for receiving the content and displaying the content to the viewer.   
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 8 , further comprising:
 a memory associated with the receiver for storing the received audiovisual content.   
     
     
         10 . The system of  claim 7 , further comprising:
 a delivery decision matrix module
 communicating with a set top box (STB) associated with a viewer and receiving viewer information from the STB; and 
 communicating a delivery format to the controller based on the received viewer information.