Patent ID: 8225346
Filing Date: 2012-07-17
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A method for providing conditional access to premium content receivable across a communications medium in one of an MHP and an OCAP broadcast system, including the acts of: (a) making a subscription request from a viewer via a multimedia home platform (MHP) receiver to access the premium content at the viewer's receiver; (b) generating, via an unlock procedure initiated by an MHP application that is executed within the viewer's receiver in response to the viewer's subscription request, a viewer identification parameter at the viewer's receiver in response to the viewer subscription request, wherein the MHP receiver of the viewer does not utilize a unique ID embedded in the receiver hardware for recognition and addressing by a service provider; (c) storing the viewer identification parameter in a volatile memory at the viewer's receiver; (d) transmitting in response to a prompt by the unlock procedure of the MHP application (d)(1) the viewer identification parameter and (d)(2) the viewer subscription request to a broadcaster over a return channel; (e) authorizing, at the broadcaster, viewer access to the premium content; (f) re-transmitting, in response to viewer access being authorized, the viewer identification parameter that was (f)(i) generated at the viewer's receiver, (f)(ii) transmitted to the broadcaster over the return channel, and (f)(iii) received by the broadcaster over the return channel, wherein re-transmitting includes re-transmitting the viewer identification parameter within an unlock trigger from the broadcaster in a modified transport stream that is broadcast to substantially all receivers in the broadcast system, including the viewer's MHP receiver; (g) receiving the transport stream with the re-transmitted viewer identification parameter at the viewer's receiver, wherein the transport stream is monitored at the viewer's receiver via a filter procedure executed by the MHP application substantially coincident with executing the unlock procedure, the filter procedure being programmed to detect a presence of unlock triggers transmitted as part of the modified transport stream, wherein responsive to the filter procedure detecting a particular unlock trigger, the unlock procedure extracts the re-transmitted viewer identification parameter from within the detected unlock trigger to attempt to unlock the premium content requested by the viewer; and (h) unlocking the requested premium content from the transmitted transport stream at the viewer's receiver in response to (h)(1) the re-transmitted viewer identification parameter and (h)(2) the viewer identification parameter stored in the volatile memory of the viewer's receiver matching at the viewer's receiver.