VCR-oriented video broadcasting for near video-on-demand services

A true video-on-demand (TVOD) system lets users view any video program, at any time, and perform any VCR functions, but its per-user video delivery cost is too expensive. A near video-on-demand (NVOD) is a more scalable approach by batching multiple clients to a shared stream or broadcasting videos. In order to provide subscribers with high-quality VOD service, it is desirable to add VCR functionality such as fast forward, fast backward and so on, but the existing video broadcasting, protocols have a limitation on providing VCR functionality. In this paper, we present the conditions necessary to provide VCR functions and then propose a video broadcasting scheme suitable for providing them, which satisfies these conditions, with minimal resource requirements. Since our proposed scheme receives video frames as a unit it can keep up rapidly with a changing VCR action pattern. It is demonstrated that the scheme provides VCR functionality consistently with minimal buffer space through simulations.