Patent ID: 8265140

Claim:
A method of facilitating client-side control of delivery of media data organized as plural chunks to a media client across a network, a given chunk of the plural chunks being encoded as plural scalable layers for different quality levels with fine-grained scalability, the method comprising: with a computing system that implements a media server, sending, for receipt by the media client across the network, curve information, wherein the curve information at least in part indicates distortion as a function of download time for the given chunk to facilitate determination of a rate-distortion preference for the given chunk, by the media client, that includes: determining a playback time constraint for a segment of one or more chunks of the plural chunks, the segment including the given chunk; and for each of the one or more chunks in the segment, selecting a download time so as to reduce overall distortion among the one or more chunks in the segment while satisfying the playback time constraint for the segment; and for the given chunk of the plural chunks: receiving feedback from the media client that indicates the rate-distortion preference for the given chunk; with the computing system that implements the media server, based at least in part upon the rate-distortion preference, selecting one or more scalable layers from among the plural scalable layers of the given chunk; and sending the selected one or more scalable layers of the given chunk.