Patent ID: 8671436

Claim:
In a video delivery system having a plurality of stream channels for delivering media services to client devices responsive to the delivered media for rendering on a user device, a method of discovering transmission resources comprising: receiving a report of available stream channels from a client device, the available stream channels visible to the client device for receiving media services by the client device, the visible stream channels based on network connections to the client device; determining, from the received report, a service group corresponding to the client device sending the report, the client devices arranged in service groups, each of the client devices in the service group responsive to two or more of the same visible stream channels, wherein the report of available stream channels from the client device does not include all of the stream channels allocated to the service group; and generating, from the determined service group, a mapping of client devices to service groups indicative of which stream channels are visible to a particular client device for receiving media services on, wherein the video delivery system does not have a predetermined stream channel to service group mapping.