Patent ID: 8351765

Claim:
A method comprising: obtaining a Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) formatted stream representing multiple specific programs among television (TV) broadcast signals for manipulation and storage, where the MPEG stream comprises separate video and audio components; storing the video and audio components on a storage device based on storage capacity constraints; extracting the video and audio components from the storage device, wherein the video and audio components are converted into TV output signals, wherein the TV output signals are delivered to a TV receiver; accepting control commands from a viewer, wherein the control commands effect a flow of the TV output signals; providing simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data from the TV broadcast signals, wherein storage of the multimedia data further comprises: assigning viewer preferences to the specific programs based on a plurality of program categories and category values; dynamically computing viewer preference ratings from the plurality of program categories and category values, wherein a given one of the program categories and a given one of the category values are deleted from a preference database based on viewing statistics; and deleting stored multimedia programs based on the viewer preference ratings.