Patent ID: 8018492

Claim:
A method comprising: sending video data corresponding to a video test pattern to an input port of a video data path, wherein the video data path does not cause the video data to undergo a transform compression or decompression or any other processing that is lossy, lossy processing being processing that would cause at least an active part of the video data at the output port to not be an exact duplicate of the corresponding at least the active part of the sent video data because of losses inherent in processing in the video data path; receiving video data at an output port of the video data path corresponding to the sent video data, the output; calculating a function of at least an active part of the received video data, the function selected such that it has a correct value when the at least the active part of the received video data accurately corresponds to the corresponding part of the sent video data, and a value other than the correct value when the at least the active part of the received video differs from the corresponding part of the sent video data; and ascertaining whether the function of at least the active part of the received video data has the correct value to ascertain whether or not an error has occurred such that the video data path can be tested.