Peer-assisted Video-on-Demand with an informed interface of chunk availability

Video-on-Demand (VoD) is popular on the Internet for offering time-unconstrained viewing experience. In order to reduce their operational costs, VoD service providers call for assistance of the participating peers via employing peer-to-peer technologies. However, perfect viewing experiences perceived on the home DVD players are still hardly (or impractical) implemented on the Internet because of Internet features, provider costs, media characteristics, and viewer behaviors. In this paper, we are motivated to take viewer behaviors into account. Specifically, information of media chunks being available in neighborhood is compactly represented on the interface of viewers' clients. The viewers in turn may bias their future VCR operations towards the currently available chunks for achieving a seldom interrupted media playback. As a side effect, VoD providers are more likely to reduce their operational costs for serving asynchronously arriving viewers.