Patent ID: 7805613

Claim:
A video content recording and playback system, comprising: a personal video recording (PVR) system including: an input coupled to a communications network for receiving television input streams communicated over said communications network; a storage controller for dynamically allocating storage space on a hard disk included in the PVR system for storing entertainment programming content obtained from said television input streams to a plurality of users of the PVR system, the controller being configured to allocate separate storage subspaces on the hard disk to each of the plurality of users; an interface for receiving a request from at least one of the plurality of users for recording or playback of selected entertainment programming content, a personal identifier being associated with the request, said personal identifier including at least one of a personal identification number (PIN) and a biometric identifier associated with the least one of the plurality of users; wherein said storage controller is responsive to the request for recording or playback of the selected entertainment programming content, said storage controller controlling storage of the selected entertainment programming content when said request is a request for recording and said storage controller controlling retrieval of requested content when said request is a playback request, said storage controller maintaining user profiles relating to each of the plurality of users of the PVR system in a user database, each individual user profile including a storage priority, a disk access priority, a content access priority program listings information corresponding to the user to which the individual user profile corresponds; wherein said storage controller is configured to use the storage priority level associated with a user to determine whether disk subspace allocated to the user can be taken away from said user when dynamically reallocating storage space in response to a request from another user; wherein said storage controller is further configured to use the disk access priority associated with a user to determine the user's right to access stored content including the content of other users of the PVR system; wherein said storage controller is further configured to use said content access priority associated with a user to determine the types of entertainment programming content the user is permitted to record and access using the PVR system; and wherein the program listing associated with a user indicates content that has been recorded and is currently stored by the user.