Patent ID: 7729381

Claim:
A system comprising: a first decoder-ready packet buffer; a second decoder-ready packet buffer; a data packet receiving module to receive data packets that encapsulate at least part of a single media stream originating from a single source; a data packet extractor module to extract decoder-ready packets from the data packets and store the decoder-ready packets into the first decoder-ready packet buffer and the second decoder-ready packet buffer; a media decoder module to decode decoder-ready packets from the first decoder-ready packet buffer; and a virtual media player module to receive, substantially synchronously with the decoding of decoder-ready packets from the first decoder-ready packet buffer by the media decoder module, duplicate decoder-ready packets from the second decoder-ready packet buffer and to generate delivery performance information for at least part of the single media stream, data from which is included in the duplicate decoder-ready packets, wherein the generating of delivery performance information includes the virtual media player module attempting to assemble one or more media frames or other discrete portion of the single media stream from the decoder-ready packets, thereby to determine whether the media frames constitute complete media frames, and when the virtual media player module determines that the media frames that were attempted to be assembled are in some way impaired or ill-formed, the virtual media player module generates a media impairment report.