Patent ID: 7530090

Claim:
A method of supplying a program to a plurality of client terminals in a near-video-on-demand fashion using a redundant broadcast schedule including a number of redundant broadcast channels m in which users of the client terminals requesting a program have a first maximum waiting time of L/m, wherein L is a program length, the method comprising acts of: determining a broadcast schedule for the program; and broadcasting the program according to this broadcast schedule; determining the size of an initial fraction of the program to be prerecorded by the client terminals in order to achieve a second maximum waiting time of w max , wherein w max <L/m; supplying the initial fraction of the program; prerecording the initial fraction of the program in the client terminals; determining a size of a client fraction of the program to be prerecorded by the particular client terminal i in order to achieve a third maximum waiting time of w i , w i <w max ; and prerecording the client fraction of the program in the particular client terminal I, wherein said method further comprises the acts of: determining the broadcast schedule for the remainder of the program; and broadcasting the remainder of the program according to this broadcast schedule, and wherein the remainder of the program is supplied in a fragmented periodic fashion in which the remainder of the program is partitioned into b max −b min +1 blocks, where the first block is broadcast at least once every b min slots, the second block once every b min +1 slots and the last block at least once every b max slots, and wherein the size of the initial fraction is substantially equal to max ⁡ ( 0 , w max + 1 b max + 1 · b min - w max ) ( 3 ) wherein, w max is the second maxium waiting time for all client terminals expressed as a fraction of the duration of the program.