Patent ID: 8291457

Claim:
A method for a client module to provide a channel selection request in a multimedia system, the method comprises: receiving a current set of channels from a multimedia server as a stream of data, wherein the current set of channels includes one or more channels destined to other client modules; receiving an input signal from a client; interpreting the input signal to determine type of signal; when the type of signal is control information, determining whether the control information relates to a local command or a system-level command, wherein the determining whether the control information relates to a local command or a system-level command further comprises: determining that the control information includes a channel selection request for a channel of interest; determining whether the one or more channels destined to other client modules in the current set of channels from the multimedia server includes the channel of interest; and when the current set of channels includes the channel of interest, locally processing the input signal to provide the channel of interest to the client; when the control information relates to a system-level command, processing the control information for conveyance to a multimedia server to produce a control message; transmitting the control message to the multimedia server via a radio frequency (RF) communication path; and in response to the control message, receiving packets of channel data via the RF communication path, wherein the channel data includes multimedia data from one of a plurality of multimedia sources.