A novel scalable interactive multiple-rate staggered broadcasting video-on-demand system

Ideally, video-on-demand (VOD) systems provide the user with the facility to watch any video at the time of their choice and permit interactive (VCR) functionality. Special contingency channels can be allocated in order to provide VCR functions; however; this threatens the scalability of the VOD system. Client buffering is an alternative, but, due to its discrete nature, present algorithms suffer from discontinuous VCR actions. A novel scheme for providing VCR functions is proposed by buffering a multiple-rate video channel. Significant improvements in both the overall percentage of discontinuous VCR actions and destination shifts are achieved, without having a dedicated interaction channel. It also has a simpler video fetching mechanism which leads to a low cost client system.