US 5,600,573 · Granted 1997-02-04

The 1997 Patent That Made Video-On-Demand Possible

Before Netflix or YouTube, this patent described the central brain of a system that could store tons of TV programs and send exactly the right show to your TV whenever you asked for it. It's the blueprint for how cable companies would eventually let you pause live TV and rewind, or pick any program from a menu instead of watching whatever was scheduled.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a complete operations center that receives television programs, stores them digitally, packages them into different formats, and delivers them on demand to multiple homes. Specifically, what's protected is the combination of receiver, video storage system, computer-assisted packaging engine, system controller, and output equipment all working together to organize, encode, and route programs based on subscriber requests and available bandwidth. If a competitor built a similar central hub that took in broadcast signals, stored them, generated on-screen menus, and pushed selected programs to set-top boxes in homes, they'd be infringing this patent.

Why it matters

This patent captures the foundational architecture of video-on-demand, a technology that transformed how millions watch television. Filed in 1994 during the early cable-digital transition, it protected the core idea that you could centralize all program management and delivery in one intelligent system rather than broadcast everything to everyone simultaneously. It gave Discovery Communications and cable providers a legal moat around their ability to offer interactive, subscriber-controlled viewing—a feature that later became table stakes for streaming services and cable boxes.

Real-world use

Every time you press your cable remote to pause, rewind, or skip ahead while watching live TV, or when you browse an on-screen menu to pick a recorded show, you're using technology descended from the architecture this patent locked down.

Original USPTO abstract

The present invention is an operations center that organizes and packages television programs for transmission in a television delivery system. The center is capable of receiving, storing, packaging and delivering countless programs in various signal formats. The center is a particularly useful invention for program delivery systems which will provide subscribers with video on demand, near video on demand and/or the ability to select programs from on-screen menus. The center's primary components are a receiver, system controller, video storage, computer assisted packaging system (CAP) and output equipment. The components can receive, convert, store, select, retrieve, encode and otherwise process multiple program signals, gather program identities of analog and/or digital programs, generate menus, package programs efficiently based on subscriber needs and the available bandwidth, and output packaged program products to multiple remote sites. To perform these functions, the CAP creates program lineups, menus, instructions on the packaging of programs, and/or allocates available bandwidth. In the preferred embodiment, the packaged program products contain programs, control information, and menus.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,600,573
Filing date: 1994-12-02
Grant date: 1997-02-04
Assignee: Discovery Communications, Inc.
Inventor(s): HENDRICKS; JOHN S., WUNDERLICH; RICHARD E.
CPC class: H04N7/17336

View original record on Google Patents →

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