Remote Temporal Couplers for Multiple Content Synchronization

Watching TV shows changed in both technology (3D, iTV, smartTV, ...) and source (P2P, IPTV, CDN, ...). Also the user can access digital content from diverse sources by using one or more devices for composing his presentation. This content can range from additional media objects to media streams transmitted in broadcast. The challenge is to make the clocks associated with the presentation of content from different sources (Extra Contents -- EC) aligned under one particular clock (the Main Content one -- MC) at each site (User Device -- UD) where they will be presented. In other words, a MC from the same source is presented in different times for users in different locations, and the EC accessed by each UD will be synchronized with the MC being presented at that moment through a local clock that aligns extra and main content. The proposed model allows any content supplier to offer synchronized contents to a MC regardless any explicit synchronization information being provided by the MC provider. Two evaluations were applied to validate the proposal: a frame correlation and an accuracy test. They have shown that the model worked and achieved a fine-grained precision.