Patent ID: 8910202

Claim:
A method, comprising: at a regional headend, receiving a multiple program transport stream (MPTS) containing multiple programs; at the regional headend, receiving an original alternate content stream simultaneously with the multiple program transport stream (MPTS); at the regional headend, identifying portions of the multiple program transport stream (MPTS) to replace with the alternate content; at the regional headend, updating a time stamp associated with the alternate content; at the regional headend, generating an alternate content data stream including the original alternate content stream and at least one sync packet without actually inserting the multiple program transport stream (MPTS) into the alternate content data stream, wherein the sync packet enables synchronous replacement of the alternate content into the multiple program transport stream (MPTS), wherein generating the alternate content stream including inserting padding packets to the original alternate content stream effective to match a bit rate of the alternate content data stream to the multiple program transport stream (MPTS); and at the regional headend, distributing both the alternate content data stream and the multiple program transport stream (MPTS) to a receiving system of a single frequency network (SFN) region, the receiving system being operable to (a) receive both the alternate content data stream and the transport stream, (b) insert data from the alternate content data stream into the multiple program transport stream (MPTS) to obtain a combined stream, and (c) broadcast the combined stream over a distribution network.