System for abstracting audio-video codecs

A system for providing media to a media player, said system comprising:

• a receiver for:
• receiving encoded media from at least one of a plurality of media sources;
• and
• providing said encoded media in a predetermined format, said encoded media being encoded in accordance with at least one of a predetermined number of encoding techniques;
• a decoder for:
• receiving said formatted media;
• and
• respectively decoding said formatted media in accordance with said at least one of
• a predetermined number of decoding techniques;
• and
• a renderer for:
• receiving said decoded media;
• and
• rendering said decoded media via at least one of a plurality of media players, said plurality of media players comprising at least one game media player, wherein modification of at least one of said encoding and decoding techniques requires no modification of said game media player.

An application programming interface (API) for providing media to a media player, said API comprising:

• a stream object for receiving encoded media from at least one of a plurality of media sources and for providing said encoded media in a predetermined format, said encoded media being encoded in accordance with at least one of a predetermined number of encoding techniques;
• a decoder object for receiving said formatted media and for respectively decoding said formatted media in accordance with said at least one of a predetermined number of decoding techniques;
• and
• a renderer object for receiving said decoded media and rendering said decoded media via at least one of a plurality of media players, said plurality of media players comprising at least one game media player.