System for transmitting programs to client terminals

摘要

A system (100) has a collection of programs on a central storage device (112). The system (100) supplies a particular program to a plurality of client terminals (104, 106) in a near-video-on-demand fashion using a redundant broadcast schedule. The users of the client terminals have a maximum waiting time until the client terminal can present the start of the program. An individual client terminal (104) may offer a shorter maximum waiting time to its user by prerecording a fraction of the program that is broadcast as part of the broadcast schedule.