Patent ID: 7698723

Claim:
A system for multimedia on demand, the system comprising: a plurality of buses comprising a media bus, a network bus, and a system data bus; a plurality of tuners and demodulators with each tuner and demodulator having an output connected to the system data bus and connected to an analog-to-digital converter, the plurality of tuners and demodulators sending an analog information signal to the analog-to-digital converter, and the analog-to-digital converter outputting digital information signal based at least in part on the analog information signal; the plurality of tuners and demodulators also connected to a decryption circuit that decrypts an encrypted information signal received from the plurality of tuners and demodulators and produces a decrypted information signal; a decoder circuit connected to the decryption circuit that converts the decrypted information signal from one format to a second format; a cipher/decipher circuit connected to the decoder circuit and connected to the analog-to-digital converter that deciphers the digital information from the analog-to-digital converter and deciphers the converted decrypted information signal from the decoder circuit; the cipher/decipher circuit connected to the media bus and sending deciphered information signals to the media bus; the system data bus connected to the media bus and configured to only receive the deciphered information signals from the media bus, the system data bus unable to send information to the media bus; a video overlay processor connected between the system data bus and the media bus, the video overlay processor superimposing a first audio-video signal over a second audio-video signal to produce a superimposed signal and sending the superimposed signal to the system data bus; the network bus connected to the system data bus and receiving system data bus information and the superimposed signal communicated along the system data bus; a mass storage device connected to the system data bus and storing the system data bus information; circuitry managing the tuners and demodulators to allow recording of content to the mass storage device while processing other content for output to provide a rewind function for the content; a data switch connected to the network bus, the data switch receiving the system data bus information and the superimposed signal and sending the system data bus information and the superimposed signal to one or more switch ports; a processor connected to the system data bus; and memory coupled to the system data bus, wherein a browser-based graphical user interface is stored in the memory, the processor automatically downloads and stores content items to the memory, the processor receives an instruction to retrieve the graphical user interface from the memory, and the processor sends the graphical user interface to a client device with the graphical user interface describing the content items stored in the memory.