1. A method, performed in a digital home communication terminal (DHCT), of assembling a multimedia transport stream from a layer- 2 packet, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, in kernel mode, a command from a user mode video playback component; in response to the received command, processing, in kernel mode, layer- 2 packets received through a binding to a network interface driver in order to assemble multimedia transport packets encapsulated within the received layer- 2 packets into an MPEG elementary stream, wherein the processing includes applying at least one filter to the received layer- 2 packets and assembly only includes multimedia packets meeting the applied filter criteria; copying the multimedia packets that did not meet the applied filter criteria to a protocol stack; and supplying the MPEG elementary stream to a decoder.