Media server system which employs a SCSI bus and which utilizes SCSI logical units to differentiate between transfer modes

摘要

A media server system including a media server coupled through a SCSI bus to one or more MPEG decoder boxes. Each of the MPEG decoder boxes includes a plurality of data channels and is adapted to receive encoded MPEG data from the computer system. The computer system generates data transfers to the respective MPEG decoder boxes for transfer on the selected channels. The computer system is configurable according to various file storage formats, including file systems which prepend a header comprising channel information to the video data, and file systems which do not prepend a header comprising channel information to the video data. According to the present invention, the computer system assigns a first SCSI logical unit number, preferably LUN 0, to a SCSI bus data transfer if the data being transferred includes a header comprising channel information. The computer system assigns a SCSI logical unit number which corresponds to the destination channel if the data transfer does not include a header including channel information. Each of the MPEG decoder boxes examines received data from the computer system and uses the SCSI logical unit number comprised in the data to determine the channel. If the LUN is 0, the MPEG decoder box examines the header in the received data and determines the channel from the header. If the LUN is other than 0, the MPEG decoder box determines the channel based on the LUN number. Therefore, the present invention allows the MPEG decoder box to operate with different file systems. IMAGE