Patent ID: 8027381

Claim:
A method for staggercasting, comprising the steps of: encoding a set of signals representing content, the set capable of being decoded to produce a corresponding set of decoded signals, each decoded signal having a quality different from the qualities of the decoded signals corresponding to the other encoded signals; generating a composite signal comprising the set of encoded signals staggered in time; extracting the set of encoded signals from the composite signal; detecting errors in the set of extracted encoded signals to produce a subset of available extracted encoded signals which are not erroneous; and decoding a content representative signal at a selectable desired quality; wherein the step of generating a composite signal comprises the step of further including a signal carrying information about respective qualities of the encoded set of signals; wherein the decoding step comprises the step of selecting the content representative signal at the desired quality automatically; and wherein the step of selecting the desired quality automatically comprises the step of selecting the desired quality in response to preset selection parameters.