Patent ID: 7796598

Claim:
A method in a network at a network device, the method comprising: receiving network packets encapsulating a plurality of redundant media streams representing the same one or more media programs, each stream provided in stream packetized form as stream packets, such that each network packet encapsulates a plurality of stream packets; buffering the received streams; for each of the one or more media programs in each buffered stream, learning a program identifier for the media program from the buffered streams; searching the packets of the buffered redundant streams for synchronization points for the learned program identifier, each synchronization point of each individual stream being defined by a combination of three or more pre-defined fields of the stream packets of the individual stream, at least a first pre-defined field of the three or more pre-defined fields being found in a packetized elementary stream (PES) packet header of each network packet, at least a second pre-defined field of the three or more pre-defined fields being found in a transport stream (TS) packet header of each stream packet, the pre-defined fields for any stream selected such that the combination is sufficient to uniquely identify a location in the stream; comparing the synchronization points, and synchronizing the redundant streams based on the comparison; and providing a single stream as an output stream, the providing of each packet containing the output stream being from one of the received buffered streams, such that the output stream includes the same one or more media programs as each of the redundant media streams.