Patent ID: 7992068

Claim:
A method comprising: providing a standard multimedia data stream, the stream containing encoded multimedia data and standard uniform error correction data for error correcting the encoded multimedia data, the uniform error correction data providing substantially the same uniform error correction for each portion of the encoded multimedia data; selecting some stream portions of the standard multimedia data stream but not other stream portions of the multimedia data stream for additional unequal error correction, the selection depending on the importance of the type of data contained in the stream portions to the quality of the presentation of the multimedia data; generating additional unequal error correction data for corresponding selected stream portions and not for the other stream portions that were not selected; first transmitting the standard multimedia data stream with the uniform error correction data; second transmitting enhancement data including the additional unequal error correction data; whereby for the selected stream portions, both uniform error correction data and additional unequal error correction data are transmitted, and for the other stream portions, only uniform error correction data are transmitted.