Strategies for scheduling bandwidth-consuming media events

A method for resolving schedule conflicts affecting a client device that employs virtual tuner functionality, comprising:

• placing an operations center into communication with a plurality of the client devices, wherein the operations center includes a scheduling module for receiving user preference settings from users of the client devices;
• establishing, at the operations center, a plurality of schedules, each schedule corresponding to one of the client devices, wherein each schedule specifies plural media programs to be received over a communication channel for recording by the corresponding client device, wherein one or more of the media programs is scheduled to be received over the communication channel in a high definition format version that requires a first amount of bandwidth;
• identifying at least one conflict in a first one of the schedules by taking into account whether an amount of bandwidth of the communication channel to be consumed by each of said plural media programs in the first schedule would exceed a total amount of bandwidth of the communication channel available to the client device to receive the plural media programs;
• in response to identifying the at least one conflict, determining the scheduling module at the operations center by referring to a media program guide source that one or more of the media programs scheduled to be transmitted in the high definition format version is available in a standard definition format version that requires a second amount of bandwidth that is less than the first amount of bandwidth required for transmitting the one or more media programs from the operations center to the client device;
• determining that replacing the one or more of the media programs in the high definition format with a standard definition format version would resolve the at least one conflict by reducing the bandwidth required for transmitting the plural media programs from the operations center to less than or equal to the total amount of the bandwidth of the communication channel available to the client device to receive the plural media programs;
• and
• presenting at least one solution to the user of the first client device, wherein the scheduling module at the operations center is configured to identify the user's preferences regarding a quality at which the one or more media programs are scheduled to be received over the communication channel, and when the user's preference is for receiving programs in the high definition format, the at least one solution includes selecting at least one of the media programs for receiving over the communication channel at a lower bandwidth requirement by changing scheduled reception and recording from the high definition format version to the standard definition format version for resolving said at least one conflict.

A system for scheduling the processing of media programs for a client device that employs virtual tuner functionality, comprising:

• a head end operations center including a processing device configure by execution of program code stored in one or more computer readable memory devices to implement a schedule setting module for receiving scheduling instructions from the client device to create a schedule for the recording device to receive and record a set of media programs, wherein the schedule setting module identifies at least one bandwidth event that affects transmission of the set of the media programs to the client device and the recordation of the set of the media programs by the client device by taking into account whether an amount of bandwidth to be consumed by transmitting the set of media programs over a communication channel would exceed a total amount of bandwidth of the communication channel available to the client device to receive the set of media programs, the client device including a media processing module for receiving and recording the set of media programs transmitted via a network from the operations center;
• wherein the schedule setting module at the operations center is configured to identify different bandwidth versions of at least one media program in the set of media programs by accessing a program guide source;
• wherein the schedule setting module is configured to identify a users preferences regarding quality at which media programs are received and recorded corresponding to available bandwidth versions of the media programs;
• wherein the schedule setting module is configured to provide a schedule to the client device which governs the reception and recording of said set of media programs based on the identified bandwidth versions and user's preferences,
• wherein the schedule setting module is configured to resolve at least one conflict in the schedule caused by the bandwidth event by automatically selecting a lower bandwidth version of one or more of the media programs in the set of media programs in place of a higher bandwidth version of one or more of the media programs requiring a first bandwidth for transmission, by automatically switching to a lower bandwidth version of the one or more media programs, requiring a second lower bandwidth for transmission over the communication channel to the client device.