Patent ID: 8510851

Claim:
A content access device for searching for remote content and retrieving media stream protected by a digital rights management (DRM) system, the content access device comprising: a network interface configured to receive the protected media stream from a remote content provider via a network; a plurality of distinct DRM components corresponding to a plurality of DRM systems supported by the content access device; and a content extraction unit operable to select a DRM component of the plurality of DRM components and execute the selected DRM component to recover the content signal from the protected media stream, wherein select the DRM component dependent upon information carried in the protected media stream; wherein the content access device is operable to: query a search engine for available content via the network; receive, from the search engine, a plurality of content references that match the query, from the plurality of content references, remove content references relating to content protected by a DRM system that is not supported by the content access device to obtain one or more content references that are compatible with the supported DRM systems; present content references of the one or more content references that are compatible with the supported DRM systems, and in response to selection of a content reference of the presented one or more content references, request content associated with the selected content reference from the remote content provider.