Patent ID: 8346930

Claim:
A method for managing access by a plurality of system applications within a multimedia content system to at least one system resource, comprising the steps of: providing, by a controller configured to receive multimedia content and coupled to a memory for storing at least a portion of the multimedia content, at least one virtual resource associated with at least one of the plurality of system applications for the at least one system resource, wherein the multimedia content can include system application information associated with at least one of the plurality of system applications, and wherein the at least one system application is an active application accessing a system resource or a non-active application seeking access to a system resource, wherein the virtual resource can be configured in an attached mode in which the virtual resource forwards multimedia content between the system resource and the associated active system application accessing the system resource, wherein the virtual resource can be configured in a detached mode in which the virtual resource emulates the system resource which the associated non-active system application is attempting to access, and wherein the virtual resource configured in the detached mode emulates the system resource by providing at least one of: an ability of the virtual resource to receive application information from a non-active system application, an ability of the virtual resource to provide application information to the non-active system application, an ability of the virtual resource to generate application information to provide to the non-active system application when the non-active system application becomes active, and an ability of the virtual resource to store application information to provide to the non-active system application when the non-active system application becomes active; configuring, by the controller, the virtual resource, upon activation of a system application, to the attached mode and coupling the virtual resource between the associated active system application and the accessed system resource; configuring, by the controller, the virtual resource, upon non-activation of a system application, to the detached mode and decoupling the virtual resource associated with the non-active system application from the system resource; and wherein the virtual resource provides to the system application an appearance that the system application always has access to the system resource, even if the system application is not active and does not have access to the system resource, and even if only the active system application has access to the system resource.