Method and system for multi-program clock recovery and timestamp correction

A decoding system for decoding a set of programs comprising:

• a transport engine configured to receive a plurality of programs transported in a transport stream, and extract program-clock references (PCRs) and timestamps from the programs;
• an adder configured to add the PCRs with PCR offsets to adjust the PCRs from an encoder-clock basis to a decoder-clock basis, wherein the sums are referred to as the mapped PCRs, each of the programs is associated with a PCR offset, and the PCR offsets represent timing differences between the encoder-clock basis and the decoder-clock basis;
• a correction engine configured to update the PCR offsets as PCRs are encountered in the programs;
• an offset register configured to receive the PCR offsets from the correction engine and transfer the PCR offsets to the adder, wherein the adder is configured to add the PCR offsets to the timestamps to map the timestamps from the encoder-clock basis to the decoder-clock basis, wherein summed timing offsets and timestamps are referred to as a mapped timestamps;
• and
• a program decoder configured to receive the mapped timestamps to decode the program substantially simultaneously.

A multi-program decoding method comprising:

• receiving a transport stream that includes a plurality of programs;
• extracting, from each program, a set of program-clock references (PCRs) and a set of timestamps that are associated with a first timing basis;
• generating, based on the PCRs and a decoder-clock signal, a set of timing offsets that represents a difference between the first timing basis and a second timing basis, wherein each timing offset is associated with one of the programs and with this programs PCRs and timestamps;
• adding the timing offsets, respectively, to the timestamps respectively associated with the timing offsets to adjust the timing basis of the timestamps from the first timing basis to the second timing basis;
• and
• decoding one or more of the plurality of programs based on the timestamps adjusted to the second timing basis.