Patent ID: 8850474

Claim:
A method for providing a virtual content store, the method comprising: receiving a request for a content stream at a regional headend; determining, by the regional headend, whether the content stream is available in a local content vault at the regional headend; determining, in response to the content stream not being available in the local content vault, by the regional headend, whether the content stream is available from a central content vault, wherein determining whether the content stream is available from the central content vault comprises determining whether the content stream is available in a content list, wherein the content list is created by an ingest driver at the central vault and distributed to each of a plurality of regional headends associated with the central vault; and in response to determining that the content stream is not available from the central content vault, determining, by the regional headend, whether the content stream is a local interest content stream, wherein determining whether the content stream is a local stream comprises checking a list of categories of content streams that are unlikely to be requested by users associated with other regional headends; ingesting, in response to the determination that the content stream being the local interest content stream, the content stream at the local content vault at the regional headend; incrementing a retention counter associated with the content stream; establishing a streaming session to a subscriber; and providing the requested content stream to the subscriber via the streaming session.