Patent ID: 8621044

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for smoothly playing media on a client, the method comprising: sending from the client a request for a chunk of media to a server over a network, wherein the chunk comprises a uniform portion of the media available from the server to multiple clients and wherein the request comprises a standard hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) request that does not include byte ranges such that a corresponding response can be cached by a common Internet cache server that does not cache byte ranges; receiving at the client the requested chunk; parsing the chunk into a metadata portion and a media data portion: wherein an HTTP response header received with the requested chunk does not include a codec with which the media data portion of the chunk is encoded; adding the chunk metadata to an ongoing media manifest that describes information regarding a larger media element to which the media chunk belongs; and playing the media data using a codec identified by the chunk metadata and hardware of the client, wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.