US Patent 7295576 Transport packet parser

A transport packet parser (42) includes a transport packet header decoder (50) for identifying a packet identifier (PID) and continuity counter (CC) associated with a current packet. The PID along with an enable (En) bit is input to an PID associative memory (52) in search mode to identify an address associated with the PID. The address is used to access a CC associated with a previous packet for the same PID in a random access memory (62). The previous continuity counter is used along with other header information to determine whether the current packet satisfies predetermined criteria. If so, the packet is passed to a transport packet buffer for further processing.