Concurrent serving of a media stream

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2018359296-A1
Application number	US-201816104922-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Aug 19, 2018
Priority date	Jun 29, 2016
Publication date	Dec 13, 2018
Grant date	—

Abstract

Online content is served to participant devices using two or more systems. The content served by each system is not the same. Rather, the content streams coming from each system is a partial or lower-quality version of the original high-quality version of the content stream. A single one of the partial data streams can be used by the participant device to output a lower-quality version of the original content stream to the user. Alternately, the received partial content streams can be combined to output, to the user, a high-quality version of the original content stream.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A communication system, comprising:
a first server having a plurality of user devices linked to one another via the first server wherein the plurality of user devices share a media stream, the media stream including at least a first partial media stream and a second partial media stream, first partial media stream being different from the second partial media stream, the first server sending, to the plurality of user devices, the first partial media stream; and, a second server having the plurality of users linked to one another via the second server, the second server sending, to the plurality of user devices, the second partial media stream.

2 . The system of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the plurality of user devices combines the first partial media stream and the second partial media stream in order to output a full-quality version of the media stream.

3 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the first server and the second server are online conferencing servers.

4 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the media stream originates from a first user device of the plurality of user devices and the first server splits the media stream into the first partial media stream and the second partial media stream.

5 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the media stream originates from a first user device of the plurality of user devices and the first user device splits the media stream into the first partial media stream and the second partial media stream.

6 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the media stream includes error control coding, and at least the first partial media steam includes error control coding.

7 . The system of claim 6 , wherein at least one of the plurality of user devices uses error control coding in the first partial media stream to output a version of the media stream.

8 . A method of operating a communication system, comprising:
linking a plurality of user devices to one another via a first server, wherein the plurality of user devices are to share a media stream; linking the plurality of user devices to one another via a second server; sending, from the first server and to the plurality of user devices, a first partial version of the media stream; sending, from the second server and to the plurality of user devices, a second partial version of the media stream; receiving, by at least a first user device of the plurality of user devices, a first portion of the first partial version and a second portion of the second partial version; and, combining, by the first user device, the first portion and the second portion to output to a user a version of the media stream.

9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the first portion and the second portion are used by the first user device to output a full-quality version of the media stream.

10 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the first partial version and the second partial version include error control information.

11 . The method of claim 8 , further comprising:
receiving, by the first server and from a second user device of the plurality of user devices, the media stream.

12 . The method of claim 8 , further comprising:
receiving, by the first server and from a second user device of the plurality of user devices, the first partial version of the media stream; and, receiving, by the second server and from the second user device of the plurality of user devices, the second partial version of the media stream.

13 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the first partial version of the media stream and the second partial version of the media stream include error control information calculated from the media stream.

14 . The method of claim 8 , further comprising:
receiving, by the first server and from a second user device of the plurality of user devices, the media stream; and, receiving, by the second server and from the first server, the second partial version of the media stream.

15 . A method of operating a user device linked to a communication system, comprising:
receiving, from a first server linking a plurality of user devices to one another, a first partial version of a media stream; receiving, from a second server, a second partial version of the media stream; and, using at least one of the first partial version and the second partial version to output a version of the media stream.

16 . The method of claim 15 , further comprising:
decoding error control information provided by at least one of the first partial version and the second partial version to output the version of the media stream.

17 . The method of claim 16 , wherein decoding the error control information provided by at least one of the first partial version and the second partial version produces a full-quality version of the media stream.

18 . The method of claim 15 , wherein the media stream includes error control information that was determined by a second user device of the plurality of user devices.

19 . The method of claim 15 , wherein the media stream includes error control information that was determined by at least one of the first server and the second server.

20 . The method of claim 19 , wherein the second partial version is provided to the second server by the first server.

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Levin Danny
• Clark Bradford R
• Hassan Amer

Classifications

• H04L65/4015 Primary

  where at least one of the additional parallel sessions is real time or time sensitive, e.g. white board sharing, collaboration or spawning of a subconference · CPC title

• H04L65/80

  Responding to QoS · CPC title

• H04L1/0072

  Error control for data other than payload data, e.g. control data · CPC title

• H04L65/4053

  without floor control · CPC title

• H04L65/604

  Electricity · mapped topic