Providing access to stored data by multiple home consumer appliances which support different data communication technologies

摘要

An arrangement for providing access to data at a consumer location, for example the home of a user of multiple consumer appliances for services such as video-on-demand or interactive television. An apparatus has a quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) interface (such as a QAM modulator) and a packet data interface (such as an Internet Protocol (IP) adapter), and receives data from a broadband communication system. The data is stored on a data recording medium, and first and second remote consumer devices (such as set-top-boxes) make requests for access to the stored data. When the request for access to the stored data is on behalf of the first remote consumer device, the stored data is transmitted from the data recording medium to the first remote consumer device via the QAM interface. When the request for access to the stored data is on behalf of the second remote consumer device, the stored data is transmitted from the data recording medium to the second remote consumer device via the packet data interface.