METHOD OF TRANSMITTING AND RECEIVING COMPRESSED TELEVISION SIGNALS

摘要

The invention relates to the transmission of MPEG encoded television signals from a Video-On-Demand server (1) to a receiver (2) via a network (3). Non-linear playback functions such as "pause" and "resume" require a very accurate control of the bit stream, taking account of typical network aspects such as network latency and remultiplexing. In order to allow the receiver to flawlessly resume signal reproduction after a pause, position labels (p; 5,6; 7a, 7b, 8a, 8b) are inserted into the bit stream at positions where the server can resume transmission of the signal after an interruption. Upon a pause request, the decoder initially continues the reproduction until such a position label is detected. The subsequent bits deliverd by the network are ignored, i.e. they are thrown away. Upon a request to resume reproduction, the receiver requests the server to retransmit the signal starting at the detected position.