Patent ID: 8874777

Claim:
A method by which a client receives streaming data from a server, comprising: receiving index information from the server, the indexing information contained in a rate map index file and relating to an indexing of a single concatenated file at the server, the concatenated file containing multiple versions of a content item encoded at different bit rates, the indexing information identifying respective locations in the concatenated file of a plurality of individual encodings of the content item; measuring bandwidth usage; selecting an appropriate bit rate for a current bandwidth; selecting an appropriate encoding for the selected bit rate; identifying, using the retrieved indexing information, a time offset in the concatenated file for the selected encoding; identifying, using the retrieved indexing information, a byte offset in the concatenated file for the selected encoding; retrieving segments of the content item from the server by specifying the identified byte offset for the selected encoding to the server; and notifying the native media player to play at the identified time offset and providing the retrieved segments to the native media player for the selected encoding.