Patent ID: 7380028

Claim:
In a receiver, a method comprising: detecting a descriptor within data transmitted by a transmitter, the descriptor including multiple sets of buffer parameters that specify multiple points on a rate-buffer size curve; selecting between conventional and robust channels, wherein relative to data of the conventional channel, data of the robust channel have a higher level of robustness to transmission errors due to an increase of redundancy in the data of the robust channel; based at least in part upon the level of robustness for the robust channel and effective rate of the data of the selected channel, identifying a buffer size using one or more of the multiple sets of buffer parameters, wherein for different levels of robustness the rate-buffer size curve provides different buffer sizes for the data of the selected channel; configuring memory resources and flow control logic to provide elementary stream acquisition according to guidelines embodied by the identified buffer size; and buffering the data of the selected channel until a buffer contains more than an initial buffer fullness value of the data of the selected channel.