Patent ID: 6889385

Claim:
A gateway for a home network comprising: one or more network interface circuits for coupling to one or more local area networks; a router having port coupled to said one or more network interface circuits and having an port for receiving packets to be routed onto a local area network for routing packets and encapsulating said packets in LAN packets that can be transmitted on a local area network selected by said routing process and transmitting said LAN packets on said local area network selected by said routing process; an IP video circuit having an output coupled to said input of said router and having an input for receiving compressed video data of a video program to be viewed, and functioning to packetize said compressed video data into packets that can be routed by said router; a conditional access circuit having an output coupled to said IP video circuit and having an input for receiving recompressed data, functioning to selectively decrypt encrypted programs; a transcoder circuit having an output for coupling recompressed data to said conditional access circuit and having an input for receiving MPEG packets of a video program; a transport demultiplexer for receiving control signals at a control input specifying which subchannel(s) to demultiplex and for extracting MPEG packets transported in the specified subchannel(s); a quadrature amplitude demodulator having an input and having an output coupled to said transport demultiplexer, for recovering digital data of a requested program and supplying said digital data at said output; a tuner having an input for coupling to a source of a radio frequency carrier signal modulated with digital data encoding said requested program, and having an output coupled to said quadrature amplitude demodulator, for tuning to a carrier signal specified by control data received at a control input and filtering out substantially all other signals; and a control means for receiving a request for a program transmitted to said gateway via a local area network and controlling the appropriate circuits in said gateway to carry out the following functions: request said program, receive downstream message data indicating upon which channel and subchannel(s) said requested program will be transmitted, tune to a carrier signal of said channel, recover digital data encoding said requested program, recompress said digital data to a bandwidth which can be transmitted in the available bandwidth on a local area network to which a set top decoder which requested program is coupled and transmit said recompressed data to a network interface circuit for a local area network to which said set top decoder is coupled; and wherein said router also functions to strip LAN packet headers from LAN packets received from a local area network to which said router is coupled and recover packets encapsulated in said LAN packets and route packets addressed to said control means to said control means.