User interface, method, and apparatus selecting and playing channels having video, audio, and/or text streams

摘要

A user interface is displayed on a computer system capable of processing one or more data streams. The user interface has one or more displayed representations, where each of the displayed representations corresponds to one of the data streams. A user of the computer system selectively adjusts the processing of each of the data streams using the corresponding displayed representation of the user interface. In a preferred embodiment, in which the computer system is a system for multicasting audio, video, and/or text data streams, the user interface has a video window for displaying the video stream, a set of audio controls for controlling the play of the audio stream, and a text reader bar for displaying the text stream.