Patent ID: 8437347

Claim:
A method of multicasting/broadcasting over a communication channel comprising: separating a same content into a plurality of streams, providing a plurality of streams from the same content, each of which includes encoded cumulative information, and one or more of which is associated with a decoding authorization level, wherein the plurality of streams have a hierarchical structure, wherein the hierarchical structure is characterized by at least a first version corresponding to a first stream of the plurality of streams and an enhanced version corresponding to the first stream and a second stream of the plurality of streams, wherein the second stream of the plurality of streams does not comprise null data, and multicasting/broadcasting the plurality of streams over a network, wherein each of the plurality of streams is separately encoded for selecting decoding by a receiving device and a set of one or more of the plurality of streams forms the first version and the enhanced version of the same content, wherein the selective decoding is based at least in part on the decoding authorization level associated with the stream.