Patent ID: 8325764

Claim:
A computerized method for scheduling of content streams, the method comprising: receiving, by an ingest processor, a content stream of bits from a network; preprocessing, by the ingest processor, the received content stream of bits, the preprocessing comprising: dividing the received content stream of bits into data packets, if the received content stream of bits includes timing information, assigning an internal timestamp to each data packet, wherein the internal timestamp is stored in the data packet independently from the timing information of the content stream, if the received content stream of bits does not include timing information, assigning an internal timestamp to each data packet, wherein the internal timestamp is stored in the data packet; and transmitting, by a delivery processor upon request from a receiver, the preprocessed content stream of bits, the transmitting comprising: establishing a delivery timestamp for each data packet in the preprocessed content stream of bits based on the assigned internal timestamp stored in the data packet, scheduling the data packets for transmission based on the delivery timestamp, and transmitting the data packets based on a schedule generated during the scheduling step.