Patent ID: 8577205

Claim:
A method for the simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data, comprising: producing from television signals an MPEG formatted stream that includes video and audio components; buffering by a media switch segments of video and audio components in a memory; associating stream information with each segment of a plurality of segments of video and audio components storing by the media switch the buffered video and audio components from the memory on one or more storage devices which contain previously stored segments of video and audio components that have associated stream information, the memory separate from the one or more storage devices; sending by the media switch a particular segment of video and audio components from the memory to one or more decoders essentially simultaneously with the storing of the particular segment of video and audio components from the memory on the one or more storage devices; decoding the particular segment of video and audio components into display output signals with the one or more decoders; receiving a control command; processing with at least a CPU the received control command and the associated stream information to send the previously stored video and audio components to the one or more decoders; and mediating, by the media switch, between the CPU, the one or more storage devices, and the memory, the media switch operates asynchronously from the CPU.