System, device, and method for streaming a multimedia file

Abstract

A system and device for, and method of, presenting multimedia information. In a client-server context, the invention includes a client that receives units of the multimedia information and presents the information on a presentation device. Each unit of information has an importance value assigned to it, which in an exemplary embodiment is indicative of the unit's importance in relation to the quality of the presentation. The invention includes a mechanism for characterizing the performance capabilities of the system. For example, several conventional statistics may be gathered and analyzed concurrently with the streaming operation and before it begins. The invention includes a mechanism for inferring network conditions from the characterized performance. The server may then stream the units of multimedia information to the client at a streaming rate and adapt the streaming rate of the streaming in response to the importance information and in response to the inferred network conditions.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.