MASKING FOR PRESENTING DIFFERING DISPLAY FORMATS FOR MEDIA STREAMS

摘要

The invention provides a method and system capable of displaying media streams in a variety of formats on a screen that is dynamically adjustable to conform to displaying the media format that is the object of the media stream. Specifically, the invention allows the viewable area of a display screen (143) to be dynamically resized using masks (161) and sidebars (163), thus the resulting viewable area is optimized for the media stream. A database (110) includes metadata (113) for media presentations. When a user (190) selects a presentation to view, a server (130) associated with the user (190) queries the database (110) for metadata (113) associated with the presentation. The metadata (113) includes aspect ratio and other information for the presentation and sends a response to the server (130) that includes the metadata (113). A portion of the metadata (113) returned to the server (130) is used by a mask controller (160) to appropriately format the display screen (143) on which the user (190) will view the presentation.