Zero-delay broadcasting protocols for video-on-demand

Abstract

Broadcasting protocols for video-on-demand continuously retransmit videos that are watched simultaneously by many viewers. Nearly all broadcasting protocols assume that the client set-top box has enough storage to store between 48 and 60 minutes of video. We propose to use this storage to anticipate the customer requests and to preload, say, the first 3 minutes of the top 16 to 20 videos. This would provide instantaneous access to these videos and also eliminate the extra bandwidth required to handle compressed video signal. We present two broadcasting protocols using partial preloading to eliminate this extra bandwidth. The first of these protocols, Polyharmonic Broadcasting with Partial Preloading (PHB-PP), partitions each video into between 20 and 160 segments of equal duration and allocates a separate data stream to each individual segment. Our second protocol, the Mayan Temple Broadcasting protocol, uses fewer data streams but requires more overall bandwidth.