Patent ID: 7779064

Claim:
A distributed content-distribution system comprising: one or more system servers that each stores content-object instances; and one or more kiosk-like content servers in retail locations that each stores content-object instances, requests content objects from one or more of the system servers, connects to a consumer-electronics devices on behalf of a user, determines the type of the connected consumer-electronics device, receives, from users, requests for download of content objects to the users' consumer-electronics device, and responds to each request for download of a content object to a user's consumer-electronics device by one of: requesting a content-object instance compatible with the user's request and compatible with the user's consumer-electronics device from a system server, retrieving, from a data-storage component within, or from a data-storage facility associated with, the kiosk-like content server, a content-object instance compatible with the user's request and compatible with the user's consumer-electronics device and downloading the retrieved content-object instance to the user's consumer-electronics device, and retrieving a content-object instance from the data-storage component or the data-storage facility and transcoding the retrieved content-object instance to generate a content-object instance compatible with the user's request and compatible with the user's consumer-electronics device; wherein the system servers include one or more back-end servers; wherein the system servers, the kiosk-like content servers, and the consumer-electronics devices are hierarchically organized, with the consumer-electronics devices at a lowest level, with the one or more kiosk-like content servers at a next-to-lowest level in the hierarchy, and the one or more backend servers at a highest level in the hierarchy; wherein each request for a content object is received from a user by the one or more kiosk-like content server at the next-to-lowest level; and wherein, when a kiosk-like content server, in response to a received request for a content object, requests the content object from a system server, the request for the content object forwarded upward through the hierarchically organized system servers.