Patent ID: 8925023

Claim:
A remote storage digital video recorder (RS-DVR) system comprising: a network interface to communicate data between the RS-DVR system and a subscriber system via a network; a file system module coupled to the network interface; an ingest agent coupled to the file system module to receive encoded media segments that represent a media content file encoded at a plurality of different bitrates; and a storage architecture coupled to the file system to store the encoded media segments as a single logical file on behalf of a subscriber and only accessible by the subscriber, resulting in the single logical file comprising stored media segments that represent recorded versions of the media content file at the plurality of different bitrates; wherein the network interface, the file system module, and the storage architecture cooperate to: provide, in response to a request for playback of the media content file from the subscriber originating at the subscriber system, one or more of the stored media segments of the single logical file that correspond to the media content file at a requested bitrate of the plurality of different bitrates to the subscriber system for presentation; and provide one or more of the stored media segments of the single logical file that correspond to the requested media content file at a second bitrate of the plurality of different bitrates to the subscriber system for presentation when the requested bitrate is unavailable at the RS-DVR system, wherein the second bitrate is different than the requested bitrate.