Patent ID: 8004608

Claim:
A method of buffering closed captioning data, comprising: receiving closed captioning information comprising closed captioning data and a field; determining whether a current closed captioning data buffer is available for the field; saving the closed captioning data to the current closed captioning data buffer if the current closed captioning data buffer is available for the field; determining whether a next closed captioning data buffer is available for the field if the current closed captioning data buffer is not available; saving the closed captioning data to the next closed captioning data buffer if the next closed captioning data buffer is available for the field; checking whether the closed captioning data can be ignored if the next closed captioning data is not available for the field; dropping the closed captioning data if the closed captioning data can be ignored; checking whether there is room for an additional closed captioning data buffer if the closed captioning data cannot be ignored; saving the closed captioning data to the additional closed captioning data buffer if the there is room for the additional closed captioning data buffer; and dropping the closed captioning data if there is no room for the additional closed captioning data buffer.