Utilizing multi-channel multicast to provide scheduled video delivery

In reality, not all users require instant video access. People are used to planning ahead. including when they wish to watch videos. This fact triggered the creation of a new video-scheduling paradigm, named Scheduled Video Delivery (SVD). It lures clients into making requests as early as possible in order to increase stream scheduling flexibility and pricing-based resource utilization. The existing SVD single-channel request scheduling algorithms, such as MEDF and LPF, have already successfully demonstrated the feasibility of SVD. In this paper, we propose the Multi-Channel Multicast Delivery (MCMD) stream-scheduling algorithm for SVD. With MCMD, a client can receive segments of the same requested video being transmitted on channels. Its patching and multi-channel receiving capabilities further improve resource utilization and the degree of multicast in delivering continuous media. The performance study shows that MCMD has a lower rejection rate and higher channel utilization than MEDF and LPF on SVD, both with and without price incentives. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.