ACCESSING TELEVISION PROGRAMMING USING A COMPUTER AND THIRD PARTY DATA NETWORKS AS A VIRTUAL PRIVATE TELEVISION

摘要

The present invention comprises a system and method for providing a multimedia file (12) from a provider to a receiver (30). The system comprises a source (20) of a multimedia file (12) to be delivered and a receiver (30) of the multimedia file (12), both in communication with network (100), and a network operation center (40) in communication with network (100) and disposed intermediate the source (20) and the receiver (30). Receiver (30) further comprises file manipulation software (32, 34) to handle encoded multimedia files (12). Multimedia file (12) is encoded and then provided to the network operation center (40), which stores the encoded multimedia file (12), along with a set of scheduling parameters relevant to the encoded multimedia file (12).