Importance

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Abstract

A remultiplexer is disclosed for communicating plural programs. Each program comprises one or more elementary streams that are encoded in relation to a single common time base corresponding to the respective program. The communicated programs originate from plural input transport streams that each comprises plural transport packets. Each transport packet contains a packet identifier indicating the data contained therein. Within each transport stream, unique packet identifiers are assigned to each elementary stream of each program. The data of each elementary stream is only contained in transport packets having a corresponding packet identifier. Each input transport stream contains time stamps for reconstructing the single program time base corresponding to each program conveyed therein. The remultiplexer has a data link module which receives the plural input transport streams. The data link module also selectively extracts transport packets from the received input transport streams. The remultiplexer has a downstream bus on which the data link module sequentially transfers at least some of the extracted transport packets. The remultiplexer selects which of the extracted transport packets to transfer on the downstream message bus depending on the packet identifiers of the transport packets. The remultiplexer also has a scheduler which assembles the transport packets transferred on the downstream bus into a single output transport stream.

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First Claim