Patent ID: 7000244

Claim:
A method of processing a transport steam comprising the steps of: (a) parsing the transport stream to derive multiple elemental streams including associated program identifiers; (b) using the associated program identifiers to assign each stream a direct memory access channel; (c) associating each direct memory access channel with a specific location in the memory of a host computer by providing at least one data descriptor comprising a frame descriptor and at least one data descriptor comprising a channel context descriptor, wherein the frame descriptor associates a region in local memory that is the source of data, and the channel context descriptor associates a region in the host memory where data is to be stored; and (d) performing direct memory access transfers of the multiple elementary streams to corresponding locations in the memory of the host computer using the direct memory access channels, wherein the multiple elemental streams are transferred between a local memory and the memory of the host computer and at least two sets of data descriptors are provided, wherein the first set comprises a local memory frame descriptor and a local memory channel context descriptor, and the second set comprises a host memory frame descriptor and a host memory channel context descriptor.