Patent ID: 7716362

Claim:
A thin client device integrated with a consumer electronic device for use in a network comprising: a signal processor configured to process media content for playback by the consumer electronic device; a network port configured to couple the thin client device to a server on the network, the server including a hard disk drive; a data/memory port configured to selectively interface with a memory device holding data comprising media content; a controller configured to control data transfer between the network port and the data/memory port including, in one mode, fully automatic control enabling transferring substantially unidirectionally data stored at the memory device through the data/memory port to the server through a global information network using the network port and archiving the data in a hard disk drive of the server responsive to automatically detecting the existence of the memory device through the data/memory port and substantially simultaneously with selective interfacing of the memory device with the data/memory port; a first internal line configured to couple the data/memory port to the signal processor; and a second internal line configured to couple the data/memory port to the network interface; wherein the controller is configured to enable parallel data transfer of the media content using the first internal line and the second internal line such that the media content is concurrently available to the signal processor for archiving in the hard disk drive of the server and for processing responsive to automatically detecting the existence of the memory device; wherein the data/memory port includes a memory storage interface.