Patent ID: 7644425

Claim:
A method for producing thumbnail images of video content in a video stream carrying frames of compressed video data, comprising: storing, in an input buffer, a preset amount of the video data from said video stream; selecting from, said input buffer, a plurality of frames, each of the plurality of frames resulting in a significant change in the video data from an immediately previous frame; generating a preview signal, the preview signal consisting of the plurality of frames resulting in a significant change; converting said preview signal into a picture-in-picture (PIP) stream and broadcasting said PIP stream to subscriber terminals (ST) over an access network according to a transmission protocol recognized by said network; and at a ST, joining a PIP stream of interest for playback of a thumbnail moving image with the video content in said video stream, overlaid on a full size image of the video content in any video stream that is currently played-back on said ST, wherein said PIP stream uses a portion of network bandwidth otherwise needed if all frames of said video streams were broadcast over said access network.