Patent ID: 6981042

Claim:
A terminal for processing digital audio-visual or multimedia data comprising: a data processing system; and a memory, wherein the data processing system stores in the memory a plurality of user profiles, wherein each user profile is defined in relation to a connection to an external device and comprises user profile data, wherein the user profile data includes resource data indicating resources within the terminal accessible by the users and priority data indicating a priority of the user with respect to other users that access the resources of the terminal and the external device, wherein the user profile data further relates to characteristics of a user of the terminal, wherein the data processing system includes a virtual machine and an object oriented application interface layer, wherein the application interface layer includes a plurality of class libraries having a user profile class library adapted to define the characteristics of the user profile data, and wherein the user profile class library includes a generic class library associated with a definition of generic characteristics of the user profile data and a sub-class library associated with definitions of characteristics associated with a specific user profile.