Patent ID: 7380264

Claim:
A method, comprising: identifying multiple tuners for accessing multimedia channels, wherein at least one of the tuners is capable of uniquely accessing one or more of the multimedia channels; creating a unified lineup of the multimedia channels; dynamically assigning the tuners to fulfill access requests for viewing and/or recording multimedia content of the multimedia channels in the unified lineup according to one or more policies; creating a list of viewing tuners selected from the multiple tuners, wherein the listed viewing tuners are prioritized according to the one or more policies; creating a list of recording tuners selected from the multiple tuners, wherein the listed recording tuners are prioritized according to the one or more policies; in response to access requests for viewing and/or recording the multimedia content, dynamically assigning tuners from the list of viewing tuners and from the list of recording tuners according to the one or more policies and swapping an assigned tuner as needed to fulfill the one or more policies; and wherein the list of viewing tuners: relates each channel in the unified lineup to the viewing tuners that are capable of accessing the channel, prioritizes the viewing tuners according to the access quality that each viewing tuner is capable of providing, and prioritizes the viewing tuners according to the number of multimedia channels in the unified lineup that each viewing tuner is capable of accessing.