Patent ID: 8533765

Claim:
A system for broadcasting content, comprising: at least one client with one or more processors; a network; a content provider which interfaces with the at least one client with the one or more processors through the network and the content provider including a scheduler for providing content to requesting clients in a plurality of streams, wherein each subsequently requesting client issuing a subsequent request accesses blocks from at least one stream of a previously requesting client and searches for blocks broadcast on the at least one stream of the previously requesting client to make-up for missing blocks, which are complemented by a subset of blocks for the subsequent requester to complete an entire set of blocks for the subsequent requester, the subset of blocks for the subsequent requester including blocks scheduled to transmit and transmitted during an arrival interval between the subsequent request and a request immediately prior to the subsequent request and if the make-up for the missing blocks from the previously requesting client are not scheduled within a predetermined time, then requesting the make-up for the missing blocks from the content provider, wherein a transmission of blocks of the complementary subset are delayed until a first reference time associated with the subsequent request to increase a probability of reception by clients of succeeding requests, wherein the scheduler broadcasts in accordance with a schedule to transmit the entire set of blocks for a first requester and a schedule for the subset of blocks for each subsequent requester, wherein the subset of blocks for a subsequent request includes blocks scheduled to transmit during an arrival interval between the subsequent request and a request immediately earlier than the subsequent request, wherein the scheduler schedules each block to be transmitted at a second reference time of the block, starting from a time that a request is made, and wherein the second reference time of the block is the time the block must be transmitted for a continuous streaming minus the starting time of the streaming.