Patent ID: 8356316
Filing Date: 2013-01-15
Classification: H04H,H04N

Abstract:
1. A method for distributing emergency alert audio data, the method comprising: receiving emergency alert message data at an encoder/decoder in an internet protocol television (IPTV) system; validating headers in the emergency alert message data; sending the validated emergency alert message to an emergency alert control (EAC) server in the IPTV system; verifying at the emergency alert control that a valid audio message is received in the emergency alert message data; if the emergency alert message data contains an audio file, creating a MP3 audio file from the audio file; and if the emergency alert message data is one of a state and local alert, placing the emergency alert message data in first-in-first-out order in a message delivery queue for delivery to end user devices in the order of the message delivery queue, else, if a streaming playback of one of a state and local alert message is in progress, suspending the streaming playback of the one of a state and local alert message, and continuously streaming the received emergency alert message to end user device in the internet protocol television system, the method further comprising: calculating a start and stop time for delivering the audio data in emergency alert message data based on a time required to deliver and present the audio data in emergency alert message in a language in which the emergency alert message is delivered, time to complete multicast joins for the end users receiving the emergency alert message data and network time protocol tolerance, wherein the audio data further comprises multimedia data, and wherein calculating the time to deliver the audio data in the emergency alert message further comprises calculating the duration of the multimedia message data in the emergency alert message, wherein the multimedia message further comprises data selected from the group consisting of image data and video data; finding key words in the multimedia data; finding visual icons data in a data base associated with key words; and inserting the visual icons data into the emergency alert message, wherein the visual icons data further comprise data indicating the nature of the alert message.