Patent ID: 7039943

Claim:
An audio/visual system, comprising: at least one output component having at least one source port for each type of output signal output from the at least one output component and at least one source port object for each of said at least one source port; at least one input component having at least one sink port for each type of input signal input to the at least one input component and at least one sink port object for each at least one sink port, wherein each at least one source port of said at least one output component is connectable to said at least one sink port of said at least one input component via at least one primitive circuit path; at least one primitive circuit object for each at least one primitive circuit path with a signal at least one of (A) originating from a source port and (B) terminating at a sink port, wherein a virtual circuit object includes at least one reference to at least one primitive circuit object and each virtual circuit object contains primitive binding information corresponding to at least one virtual circuit path associated with the virtual circuit object; and wherein each output associated with a virtual circuit object outputs a stream of signals, the signals within the stream are hierarchically organized according to how source ports are organized within a complete source port, whereby the system represents the stream of an output component by a stream object.