System and method for selection and switching of content sources for a streaming content session

摘要

Embodiments may include the generation and use of content source rankings for improving playback quality of content streams. In embodiments, a merchant system may collect and aggregate multiple quality metrics for different content streams that various content sources provide to various clients. The merchant system may utilize the quality metrics to generate rankings of content sources for clients. In some cases, a client itself may generate a ranking of content sources for use in the selection of content sources. The merchant system may provide such rankings to clients to improve the content stream playback experience on the client. For instance, at content acquisition time, a client may request a content stream from a content resource ranked highest on a content source ranking provided by the merchant. If the content stream degrades, the client may source subsequent portions of the content stream from another highly ranked content source of the ranking.

主权项

1. A system, comprising:
one or more memories; and one or more processors coupled to the one or more memories, wherein the one or more memories comprise program instructions executable by the one or more processors to:
provide, to a remote server, one or more quality metrics of various streaming content received from at least one of a plurality of content sources, wherein metadata of the one or more quality metrics specify one or more instances of client information, wherein each quality metric, of the one or more quality metrics, comprises one or more results of streaming content playback quality measurement;receive, from the remote server, a ranking of the plurality of content sources, the ranking specifying multiple content sources each ranked on an expected measure of playback quality for streaming content to be provided by that content source; wherein said ranking is generated based at least in part on the one or more quality metrics of streaming content provided to the remote server and a selected subset of one or more other quality metrics of streaming content provided to the remote server by one or more remotely-located client devices, wherein the subset of other quality metrics are selected from the one or more other quality metrics based at least in part upon a determination of a correlation between at least some instances of client information specified by metadata of the quality metrics of the subset and a selected at least one of the one or more instances of the client information specified by metadata of the one or more quality metrics of streaming content provided to the remote server;in response to receiving the ranking of content sources from the remote server, select a first content source on the basis of rank specified by the ranking and receive a portion of a particular content stream from the selected content source;subsequent to initiating playback of the content stream, determine that playback of a portion of the content stream from the first content source has failed to meet one or more quality standards; andin response to that determination, request a subsequent portion of said content stream from a second content source specified by said ranking to improve playback quality of the content stream.