Patent ID: 7124194

Claim:
An audiovisual distribution system for playing an audiovisual piece, the audiovisual distribution system comprising: a central computer server including: a mass storage that stores a plurality of audiovisual pieces, a server network card that receives requests for said audiovisual pieces, and a server multitask operating system communicating with said mass storage and said server network card; a number of buffers linked to respective controller circuits associated to hardware devices, detection means for detecting tasks realization in each of said buffers; and a plurality of audiovisual devices, each including: at least one of an audio unit and a video unit that effect play of an audiovisual piece, an interface unit that effects communication with a device user, a payment device, a device network card linked to said server network card, and a device multitask operating system module operatively coupled with respectively the audio unit and the video unit, said interface unit, said payment device, and said device network card, and wherein said device network card of each audiovisual device is declared to said device multitask operating system as a peripheral corresponding to a hard disk, said device multitask operating system having at least one hard disk access management task in which the order to play a piece resulting from a selection is processed as a hard disk sequential access task which makes the device network card send a request for said audiovisual pieces, in the form of a hard disk sequential access request, to the server network card, such that each audiovisual device does not include a storage medium for audiovisual pieces.