A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DISTRIBUTING MEDIA CONTENT SERVICES

摘要

A method of distributing a plurality of media content services (S1-S5) across a distribution network comprising dividing each of the plurality of media content services (S1-S5) into segments and transmitting the segments of each of the plurality of media content services as a sequence of bursts (305), wherein there is a window period (303) between successive bursts (305) during which media content is not transmitted. Each of the media content services (S1-S5) has a respective bit rate and the transmitting comprises transmitting each of the segments at a higher bit rate to create the window periods (303) between successive bursts (305). Starts of bursts (305) of the plurality of media content services (S1-S5) are staggered in time with respect to one another. At least one of the media content services (S1-S5) can comprise a plurality of media content service representations of different bit rate. The media content services and media content service representations can be transmitted as multicasts.