Patent ID: 8767820

Claim:
A method comprising: wirelessly transmitting rendered pixel data from a source device to a display device via a wireless channel; monitoring the wireless channel by a wireless interface of the source device; dynamically adjusting, at the source device, a data rate reduction process that is applied to the rendered pixel data prior to transmission from the source device based on parameters of the wireless channel provided by the wireless interface, wherein: the parameters are based upon the monitoring; and the dynamically adjusting the data rate reduction process comprises: if a bandwidth of the wireless channel is adequate for uncompressed transmission of the rendered pixel data, bypassing application of the data rate reduction process; if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 10% to 20% below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing low ratio I-frame only H.264 encoding; and if the bandwidth of the wireless channel drops to 30% or more below an amount needed for uncompressed transmission, implementing full H.264 mode or another data rate adaptation process that results in a high compression ratio; and wirelessly transmitting from the source device to the display device a protocol ID to describe adjustments to the rendered pixel data, the protocol ID having a data structure comprising: a first bit to indicate whether the data reduction process has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data; a second bit to indicate whether an encryption process has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data; a first field to indicate a compression type that has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data; and a second field to indicate a compression ratio that has been applied to produce the rendered pixel data.