Patent ID: 7188352
Filing Date: 2007-03-06
Classification: G06F,G06Q,G07F,G10H,G11B

Abstract:
1. A payment-based audiovisual reproduction system, comprising: a microprocessor linked to a payment device, and operating under the control of a multitasking operating system; a data store for storing audio and visual information in compressed form; a display operatively coupled to said data store; a digital audio reproducer coupled to said data store; a multitasking operating system for managing the formation of a multimedia environment, the operating system including a library of tools and services integrated in the data store, the operating system being arranged to associate a task with respective peripherals and assigning a first priority level to a display task and a second, lower priority level, to an audio task; at least two temporary buffers for storing video data and at least two buffers for storing audio data, said video and audio data being, respectively, retrieved from said data store, said temporary buffers transmitting said video and audio data respectively to the downstream display and audio reproducer through respective decompressors, the temporary buffers that store video data allowing the processing of the information transferred into a display buffer by a display control circuitry from one of the temporary buffers during video data transfer to the other temporary buffer by the operating system, the temporary buffers that store audio data allowing the processing of the information transferred into the reproduction buffer by an audio control circuitry from one of the temporary buffers during audio data transfer to the other temporary buffer by the operating system, said temporary buffers being associated with respective status buffers arranged to store state data representing respective activities relating to decompression tasks, said status buffers being provided for the temporary buffers that store video data and for the temporary buffers that store audio data, said respective status buffers being put into an active state if one of the two corresponding temporary buffers is empty, and if each of the corresponding temporary buffers contain data being put into an inactive state; a scheduling module for the operating system arranged to read said status values and to alternatively feed the video and audio buffers with said data, said scheduling module performing a test to determine the state of status buffers provided for the temporary buffers that store audio data if status buffers provided for the temporary buffers that store video data are in an inactive state, the audio buffer having a size sufficient for storing an amount of data to avoid any lack of data during audio operation by the audio reproducer, when the display task has been triggered based upon its priority level for transmitting video data to the video data buffer; and further comprising a system operating status file stored on a hard disk, said status including data relating to the insertion of money, addition of a selection to the queue, the end of a selection and data allowing the system to return to a specified location in case of an interruption caused by a fault.