Patent ID: 7509021

Claim:
A method for providing instant replay, the method comprising: receiving a video stream and an audio stream; playing a program in real time, wherein the program is rendered from the video and audio streams; compressing the video stream and the audio stream using a video compression engine and an audio compression engine respectively; storing information relating to the compressed video and audio streams and the video and audio compression engines in a sequence header; multiplexing the compressed video and audio streams along with synchronization information to form a plurality of coded audio and video frames; forming a plurality of media units, wherein each media unit includes at least one video frame and at least one or more corresponding audio frames, wherein each media unit includes a first video frame that is independently decodable, wherein each media unit is an independently decodable entity, and wherein the plurality of media units have a fixed duration; storing the plurality of media units in a memory; storing a plurality of starting addresses in a table, wherein each of the plurality of starting addresses corresponds to one of the plurality of media units; retrieving the sequence header in response to receipt of an instant replay command; selecting and configuring appropriate video and audio decompression engines based on the retrieved sequence header; identifying an instant replay starting address from the table in response to receipt of the instant replay command; retrieving one or more of the plurality of media units from the memory starting with the media unit associated with the instant replay starting address; and demultiplexing the one or more retrieved media units into compressed video and audio data for respective delivery to the video and audio decompression engines.