Patent ID: 7895633

Claim:
A method for providing secure transfer and playback of multimedia content, comprising: receiving, at a Digital Video Recorder (DVR), an indication that one or more particular multimedia devices are authorized for sharing multimedia content with the DVR; identifying, at the DVR, a personal computer (PC) in a local area network (LAN) as an authorized sharing PC based at least in part on the indication that one or more particular multimedia devices are authorized for sharing multimedia content with the DVR; establishing a secure connection between the DVR and the authorized sharing PC; receiving, at the DVR, a request for multimedia content from the authorized sharing PC, the multimedia content having been recorded by the DVR, the request for multimedia content having been sent from the authorized sharing PC in response to the authorized sharing PC receiving a message from a service provider, the message instructing the authorized sharing PC to send the request for the multimedia content; retrieving, at the DVR, the requested multimedia content recorded by the DVR from at least one storage device connected to the DVR, wherein the requested multimedia content is stored in a first format; converting, at the DVR, the first format of the multimedia content recorded by the DVR into a second format of the multimedia content, wherein the first format is a different format than the second format and the second format is a computer-readable format; and sending the second format of the multimedia content from the DVR to the authorized sharing PC.