System and method for multicast video-on-demand delivery system

摘要

A video-on-demand system divides video files into sequentially organized data segments for transmission and playback. Each segment is repeatedly transmitted in a looping fashion over a transmission channel. The rate of transmission is equal to or greater than the playback rate, and the lengths of the segments are chosen such that: (i) the receiver tunes into no more than a fixed number of channels (preferably two) at any one time; (ii) the receiver tunes into a new channel only after an entire segment has been received from a previous channel; and (iii) until a maximum segment length is attained, data is received from no fewer than two channels. The segments are sequentially presented even as new segments are being downloaded. When the display rate is equal to the transmission rate, it is found that the foregoing conditions are satisfied when the relative lengths of the segments form a modified Fibonacci sequence.