Patent ID: 7761899
Filing Date: 2010-07-20
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A digital cable system comprising a cable headend that receives and delivers content and data related to the content to facilitate service implementation in a digital cable system, comprising: a staging server located in the cable headend that receives an asset having a structure from a content provider, wherein the asset comprises both the content and the data related to the content, the data related to the content further comprising an application program identifier; a content server located in the cable headend storing the content and in communication with a subscriber set-top box for providing the content to the set-top box; and a first application program configured to execute in the cable headend and to process a machine readable description file and the application program identifier to identify a second application program among of a plurality of application programs executing in the cable headend understanding the structure of the asset, wherein the second application program is configured to interpret the data related to the content, and wherein the second application program is configured to identify the content server from among a plurality of content servers to receive the content from the staging server.