Patent ID: 9137281
Filing Date: 2015-09-15
Classification: H04L,H04N

Abstract:
1. A media system comprising: a local area computer network installed at a hospitality establishment, the hospitality establishment being a lodging establishment; a plurality of media devices coupled to the computer network and located in a plurality of guest rooms of the hospitality establishment, the media devices being audio-visual (AV) entertainment devices providing media functions within the guest rooms to guests of the hospitality establishment; and a system controller coupled to the computer network; wherein the computer network allows a guest device supporting a network-based media sharing protocol to be coupled thereto, the guest device operated by a guest of the hospitality establishment; the computer network by default prevents the guest device from utilizing the network-based media sharing protocol to share media content with the media devices; the system controller selects a subset of the media devices for which media sharing is to be enabled for the guest device, the subset including at least one of the media devices but not all of the media devices, the subset of the media devices for which media sharing is to be enabled for the guest device being located in a specific guest room of the hospitality establishment; the system controller dynamically reconfigures one or more components of the computer network in response to an event occurrence to enable the guest device to utilize the network-based media sharing protocol to share media over the computer network with only the subset of the media devices; at least one of the components is a media proxy that supports the network-based media sharing protocol; the computer network blocks multicast announcements from the media devices from reaching the quest device; the media proxy periodically multicasts an announcement according to the network-based media sharing protocol that indicates the media proxy is available on the computer network; the computer network allows the quest device to receive the announcement from the media proxy; the computer network allows the guest device to discover and share media with the media proxy utilizing the network-based media sharing protocol; the media proxy by default does not reroute media shared by the guest device to any of the media devices; the system controller dynamically reconfigures the media proxy in response to the event occurrence to cause the media proxy to reroute media shared by the guest device to one or more of the subset of the media devices; at least one of the subset of the media devices supports the network-based media sharing protocol; and when rerouting media shared by the quest device to the one or more of the subset of the media devices, the media proxy redirects a media stream received from the quest device to the at least one of the subset of the media devices that supports the network-based media sharing protocol.