US 2,009,249,222 · Filed 2009-03-24

The Patent for Watching Movies Together Online, in Perfect Sync

Imagine you and your friends want to watch a movie together but you're all in different places. This patent protects a way to stream the same video or music to multiple computers at the exact same moment so everyone sees and hears the same thing at the same time, creating a shared experience.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a system and method for delivering audio or video content to multiple computers simultaneously in a synchronized way. What's protected here is the specific approach to ensuring that when one person plays a song, movie, or slideshow, everyone connected sees and hears it at the exact same moment—not lagging behind or ahead of each other. This includes techniques to keep all the presentations locked in time together.

Why it matters

Before reliable synchronized streaming, watching content together remotely meant people saw things at slightly different times, breaking the shared experience. This patent protects the core technical mechanism for creating that 'watching party' feeling when everyone's apart. It covers a fundamental building block of modern group entertainment platforms, where timing and synchronization are everything.

Real-world use

When you and friends use an app to watch a movie together on separate devices, or listen to the same song at the same moment through a shared playlist, you're relying on synchronization technology like what this patent describes.

Original USPTO abstract

Described herein are systems and methods for presenting content to a plurality of users at a plurality of computers. Presenting content may comprise presenting media content (e.g., playing media content) such as audio or video content—including music; audio books; image slideshows; movies, television programs, video clips, and other video content; and any other suitable audio and/or visual content—at the plurality of computers to create a shared media experience (e.g., a shared listening/viewing experience) among the plurality of users. In some embodiments, one or more techniques may be applied to ensure that presentation of the content is performed substantially simultaneously (also referred to as synchronously) at each of the computers to ensure that each of the users is experiencing the same content at the same time.

Patent details

Publication number: US 2,009,249,222
Filing date: 2009-03-24
Grant date: Application — not yet granted
Assignee: Square Products Corporation
Inventor(s): SCHMIDT GEOFFREY R., MARTIN NICHOLAS C.
CPC class: H04N21/26258

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