US 5,909,638 A · High speed video distribution and manufacturing system

Abstract

A system for capturing, storing and retrieving movies recorded in a video format and stored in a compressed digital format at a central distribution site is described. A plurality of remote distribution locations are connected through fiber optic connections to the central distribution site. The remote sites maybe of one of two types: a video retail store or a cable television (CATV) head end. In the case of a video retail store, VHS videotapes, other format videotapes or other video media may be manufactured on-demand in as little as three to five minutes for rental or sell-through. A totally automated manufacturing system is described in which the customers can preview and order movies for rental and sale from video kiosks. The selected movie is then either retrieved from local cache storage or downloaded from the central distribution site for manufacturing onto a blank or reused videotape. One feature of the system is the ability to write a two-hour videotape into a Standard Play (SP) format using a high speed recording device. A parallel compression algorithm based on the MPEG-2 format is used to compress a full-length movie into a movie data file of approximately four gigabytes of storage. The movie data file can be downloaded from the central site to the remote manufacturng site and written onto a standard VHS tape using a parallel decompression engine to write the entire movie at high speeds onto a standard VHS tape in approximately three minutes.

Claims35

Dependent claims

A video distribution and manufacturing system, comprising:

a movie capture facility for capturing a movie content having a corresponding title and for producing therefrom digital data representing the movie content in the form of a movie data file;
a movie storage facility coupled to receive and store the movie data file;
a central host server coupled to the movie storage facility for catalogig a movie data file with the corresponding title and for retrieving the movie data file from the movie storage facility upon receipt of a transfer request;
a communications network coupled to the central host server for receiving the movie data file and for transmitting the movie data file over the communications network;
a remote server coupled to the communications network for receiving the movie data file;
a selection device coupled to the remote server for selecting the movie content for manufacture;
and
a production device coupled to the remote server and the selection device for reproducing the movie content from the movie data file;
a decoding apparatus connected between the remote server and the production device and operable for receiving the movie data file, for parallel decompressing the movie data file and for producing therefrom a plurality of parallel bit streams of the digital data representing the movie content;
and
the production device further operable for manufacturing the movie content from the parallel bit streams received from the decoding apparatus.

8 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

High speed video distribution and manufacturing system

Life of this patent

High speed video distribution and manufacturing system

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims35