Patent ID: 8819269

Claim:
A method of scheduling decoding of higher and lower quality video segments for output to a display, the higher and lower quality video segments being respectively transmitted at a higher bit rate and a lower bit rate, the method comprising: receiving a first plurality of the lower quality video segments following transmission over a network; queuing the first plurality of video segments within a memory; identifying a memory location for each of the first plurality of video segments queued within the memory with a pointer; scheduling the pointers for the first plurality of video segments according to a circular, first-in-first-out (FIFO) decoding schedule; receiving a second plurality of the higher quality video segments following transmission over the network; queuing the second plurality of video segments within the memory; identifying a memory location for each of the second plurality of video segments with a pointer; and replacing the pointers in the decoding schedule for one or more of the first plurality of video segments with the pointer of one or more of the second plurality of video segments having matching video, referred to as matching video segments, thereby causing the matching video segments to be decoded for output to the display instead of the corresponding lower quality video segments, referred to as replaced video segments.