Patent ID: 8479251

Claim:
A method for synchronizing streaming content with enhancing content, comprising: receiving, by a computing device, an announcement on a monitored address containing information specifying how and when to receive upcoming enhancing content, the announcements informing a client that the streaming content is interactive, providing details about the corresponding enhancing content, and describing an IP address and port on which corresponding triggers will be sent for a particular enhancement, transmission-related information, and information pertaining to content of the enhancing content; passing, by the computing device, each announcement through one or more filters to determine whether each announcement is either a match against a list of programs in which a user is interested or is a match against other types of predefined rules of acceptance; retaining, by the computing device, the announcements of interest and discarding remaining announcements; receiving, by the computing device, the streaming content which is associated with the enhancing content, the streaming content including: one or more triggers that notify a client to perform a particular action, each trigger being formatted as a string containing a key or numerical identifier, trigger data, and a checksum value and the one or more triggers containing ticker data associated with the enhanced content; and one or more data files that are either an interactive content file or contain packages containing the interactive content files; receiving, by the computing device, the enhancing content according to the information contained in the announcement and at a time in synchronization with the streaming content; enhancing, by the computing device, the streaming content with the enhancing content; and presenting the ticker data contained in the one or more triggers within a ticker and displaying the ticker together with the enhancing content and the streaming content.