Multichannel distribution for universal multimedia access in home media gateways

Today, people collect their personal multimedia content on home media servers. In addition to consuming their content on TV sets, people are using mobile multimedia players, PCs and even mobile phones. Since those terminals have various capabilities, it is necessary to adapt the content to a more device specific version. For audio, video, and graphics scalable codecs exist which realize this goal. For multimedia presentations no such scalable coding is available. This paper introduces a multichannel distribution system in home media gateways, this implies that a multimedia presentation can to be created once, and consumed on every possible terminal. The introduced multichannel distribution system is realized by combining MPEG-21 technology with existing device specific presentation languages. This results in a device agnostic Digital Item which can be transformed into a device specific presentation. The resulted presentation takes advantage of the full potential of a terminal.