Patent ID: 8434117

Claim:
A media presentation unit comprising: an audio-visual (AV) decoder for decoding media information received through a network communication channel to produce decoded media information, wherein the AV decoder is configured to process plural streams of received media information at a same time through a plurality of corresponding pseudo-tuners enabled on the AV decoder based on at least one business-related criterion, and a user interface module implemented by a processor to provide a user interface to dynamically add or remove one or more pseudo-tuners of the plurality of pseudo-tuners and to change the at least one business-related criterion, each pseudo-tuner accessing a digital stream of the media information from the one or more sources for enabling decoding of the plural streams of the media information by the AV decoder at the same time, wherein: a number of multiple streams that the AV decoder is able to decode at the same time is limited based on a number of pseudo-tuners currently enabled on the AV decoder, as specified through the user interface; the at least one business-related criterion pertains to a user agreement to pay fees to consume the plural streams of media information based on the number of pseudo tuners enabled on the media presentation unit during use of the user interface; and the plural streams pertain to plural respective views associated with a single program.