Patent ID: 8468558

Claim:
A monitoring system comprising: a first set top box for receiving content; a media player within the set top box capable of determining content criteria; a client based apparatus for actively monitoring content playback at the first set top box; the client based apparatus further configured to report the client playback state for non-managed sources to a service provider's policy or operation support system; the client based apparatus further configured to determine if it should notify the service provider's policy system or operation support system that the consumer is streaming content from a non-managed source; and the client based apparatus further configured to publish a formatted signal, wherein the formatted signal comprises: the identity of the set top box, the rate at which the content is received by the set top box, and a unique content identifier which identifies the source of the content; and the policy system or operation support system further configured to receive the formatted signal from the client based apparatus and to make bandwidth provisioning decisions based on the formatted signal.