Patent ID: 8832760

Claim:
A method of conducting a viewing event of a content item for a prearranged group of participants and for providing communications therebetween, comprising: a. receiving identification information about at least two potential participants of a group for a viewing event, each potential participant having a system for playing back the viewing event; b. transmitting an invitation to the at least two potential participants to join the group for the viewing event; c. receiving responses from one or more of the potential participants; and d. if the response is to accept the invitation to join the group, then enrolling the corresponding one or more potential participants in the group of participants, and determining if each of the one or more potential participant's system has a viewing event application disposed thereon, and if any of the one or more potential participant's system does not have a viewing event application disposed thereon, then downloading a copy of the viewing event application to the corresponding one or more potential participant's system, and wherein if the response is to accept the invitation to join the group, then further comprising determining a connection bandwidth of each of the corresponding one or more potential participants system, and determining based on each connection bandwidth if either (1) all or a portion of the content item should be encrypted and downloaded to each of the corresponding one or more potential participant's system prior to beginning of the viewing event, or (2) if the content item should be streamed continuously to each of the corresponding one or more potential participant's system, the encryption serving to disallow playback of the content item prior to the beginning of the viewing event; and e. wherein the identification information includes at least information corresponding to a setup of a text-based chat channel for the one or more potential participants to the group.