Apparatus and methods for transmitting digital multi-media signals in asynchronous transfer mode over unshielded twisted pair wiring in a multi-point topology in an improved cost-effective manner. The multi-media digital signals originate from and are received by a plurality of receiving stations connected via twisted pair wiring. The method comprises feeding input digital signals selected from the group consisting of voice, fax, video and data from signal nodes; controlling allocation of bandwidth to the input digital signals as between sending stations; providing a source data stream in binary format derived from allocated input digital signals; converting a source data stream into a digital symbol stream capable of being transmitted over the wiring; driving and filtering the digital symbol stream over the wiring; splitting the filtered digital symbol stream into a plurality of replicated digital symbol streams; amplifying and selecting each of the plurality of replicated digital symbol streams to provide an amplified and selected digital symbol stream; converting the amplified and selected digital symbol stream into a sink data stream in binary format; identifying and selecting desired digital signals of the sink data stream for the plurality of the receiving stations; and delivering the identified and selected digital signals to signal nodes.

A video system is comprised of: a) a single supervisor processor, and multiple co-processors which are selectable in number and are coupled via a bus to the single supervisor processor; b) a supervisor memory which is coupled to the supervisor processor and which stores a respective portion of each of several video streams; c) a control program in each co-processor which selectively reads the stored video stream portions from the supervisor memory and sends each video stream portion that is read to a different viewer; and d) a control program for the single supervisor processor, which dynamically updates the stored portion of each video stream in the supervisor memory and which services external requests to change the respective viewers of each video stream. In this video system, the number of co-processors is selectable; the number of video streams which are sent by each co-processor is selectable; and, the number of viewers per stream is selectable. Also in this video system, the cost of the supervisor processor and supervisor memory is incurred only once because they operate in a shared fashion with all of the co-processors.

Full-motion video data with a sub-picture and sound is recorded in a DVD-ROM drive. The DVD-ROM drive is connected to an ATAPI interface. Using a data buffer of the ATAPI interface, an MPEG stream is transferred to an MPEG2 decoder on the system board at a variable rate, and video data, audio data, and a sub-picture included in the MPEG stream are decoded by the MPEG2 decoder incorporated in the system. The decoded sub-picture is drawn in a VRAM as in normal VGA graphics. The sub-picture image drawn in the VRAM is synthesized with the video from the MPEG2 decoder by a multimedia display controller and displayed on a screen.

Processing streaming data on demand in a computer system. A service cycle is divided into a first plurality of input/output (I/O) phases for a second plurality of streams of real-time data. For each of the first plurality of I/O phases, a disk job, if any, is scheduled for one of the second plurality of streams of real-time data, and a second plurality of network jobs, each of the disk jobs corresponding with each of the second plurality of streams of real-time data.

A method and computer program for operating an interactive themed attraction (12) accessible by computer users (16) is disclosed. The method includes the steps of videotaping at least a portion of a themed attraction to create a video file; storing the video file in a computer-readable memory device accessible by a host computer (14); permitting computer users to access the host computer via a communication network (18) to view the video file; receiving at the host computer a request from one or more of the computer users to interact with the themed attraction; and controlling at least one controllable feature (20) of the themed attraction in response to the request so that the computer users can interact with the themed attraction via the communication network.