Patent ID: 7451471

Claim:
A motor vehicle optical ring network, comprising: an optical data line configured in a ring network and having a plurality of data channels; a plurality of data sources each connected to the optical data line, where each of the plurality of data sources provides compressed multimedia data onto the optical data line and each of the plurality of data sources is free of decoders that provide decompressed multimedia data onto the optical data line; and at least one data sink connected to the optical data line and comprising a video display device, and that receives the compressed multimedia data from the optical data line, where the data sink includes a bit stream decoder to decompress the received compressed multimedia data and provide (i) a decompressed video data signal indicative thereof to the video display device and (ii) a decompressed audio signal; where the at least one data sink also includes a control unit that selectively adapts the decompression of the received compressed multimedia data by the bit stream decoder based upon the compression format of the received compressed multimedia data, where the format of the received compressed multimedia data may be one of a plurality of compression formats, where the control unit also controls the data channels of the optical data line for transmitting the compressed data between the data sources and the data sink.