Making a cost-effective storage server for broadcasting digital video services

Near Video-on-Demand (Near-VoD) system, which broadcasts popular movies on a number of channels according to a predetermined program schedule, is regarded as one of the practical applications through a CATV network. In this paper, a broadcasting video storage server is proposed to support this application with flexible configuration and management functions, low system construction cost, and high efficiency. A generic file layout and a retrieval scheme are presented to accommodate variant types of videos with single, multiple, constant, and variable bit rates. Simulation results show that our broadcasting storage server can reduce 10-20% system construction cost than the previous approaches.