Patent ID: 7873259

Claim:
A method for synching a recording of a program, at a recording system communicatively connected to receive at least one broadcast signal from at least one service provider, to an actual broadcast time of said program from said broadcast signal, comprising: sampling, by said recording system, a portion of a current broadcast signal received from at least one service provider of a program on a particular channel over a particular interval of time; caching, by said recording system, at least one image from said sampled portion of said program as a graphic file and at least one audio sample from said sampled portion of said program as an audio file; receiving, at said recording system from said at least one service provider, a selection of features anticipated to be broadcast during said program comprising at least one from among a graphical feature and an audio feature; comparing, by said recording system, said portion of said current broadcast signal with a selection of features anticipated to be broadcast during said particular interval of time for said program by calculating a percentage of image bytes matching between said cached graphic file and said selection of features and by calculating a percentage of audio signal matching between said cached audio file and said selection of features; responsive to matching a particular feature from among said selection of features within at least one of said graphic file with said percentage of image bytes reaching an image threshold and said audio file with said percentage of audio signal reaching an audio threshold, calculating, by said recording system, an offset time from a difference between an expected time for broadcast of said particular feature and an actual time said particular feature matched in said portion of said current broadcast signal; and adjusting, by said recording system, a recording time of said program by said offset time, wherein said recording time is initially set to a predetermined broadcast schedule for said program on said particular channel, such that through monitoring features of said current broadcast signal, said recording time of said program is synched to said actual broadcast time of said program on said particular channel.