APPARATUSES, METHODS AND COMPUTING SOFTWARE PRODUCTS FOR OPERATING REAL-TIME MULTIPARTY MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS

摘要

A system for operating a real-time multiparty communications session between a plurality of peer end-user computing devices communicating across a network is disclosed. The system includes an end-user computing device operating as a host node which receives over the network a plurality of input multimedia content streams which originate from one of a plurality of networked peer end-user computing devices. The host node is configured to concurrently mix together at least visual content derived from one or more of the input multimedia content streams and at least any visual content generated by any multimedia content source provided at the host node computing device to combine the mixed content into a single combined multimedia content stream. The host node computing device is also configured to concurrently transmit the single combined multimedia content stream over the network to a plurality of peer end-user computing devices for reproduction.