Patent ID: 7865920

Claim:
A method of communicating programming to subscribers in a network, said network including one or more programming origination stations, a plurality of intermediate transmission stations, and a plurality of subscriber stations, each intermediate transmission station receiving programming from one of said origination stations and retransmitting said received programming to at least one of said subscriber stations, each intermediate transmission station including a plurality of storage locations and a switch operatively connected to said plurality of storage locations, said method comprising the steps of: storing at each of said plurality of intermediate transmission stations data of predetermined capacities; transmitting, from at least one of said one or more programming origination stations, a plurality of units of audio or video programming to said plurality of intermediate transmission stations; transmitting from said at least one of said one or more programming origination stations to said plurality of intermediate transmission stations data that identify said units of audio or video programming or a subject matter included in said units of audio or video programming; processing said stored data of said predetermined capacities at each intermediate transmission station to identify one of said plurality of storage locations at which to store at least one of said plurality of units of audio or video programming, wherein said identified storage locations are different for each of said plurality of units of audio or video programming; controlling said switch at each of said plurality of intermediate transmission stations to receive and store said units of audio or video programming at said identified one of plurality of storage locations in accordance with said step of processing stored data of said predetermined capacities; processing said data that identify said units of audio or video programming or subject matter included in said units of audio or video programming at each intermediate transmission station to determine a period of time for which to store said units of audio or video programming; controlling said switch at each intermediate transmission station to to transfer said at least one of said units of programming from said identified one of said plurality of storage locations to another of said plurality of storage locations in accordance with said step of processing said stored data of said predetermined capacities and said step processing said data that identify said units of audio or video programming or subject matter included in said units of audio or video programming; and controlling said switch each of said plurality of intermediate transmission stations to transmit said received and stored units of audio or video programming to at least one of said subscriber stations in accordance with said step of processing said data that identify said units of audio or video programming or subject matter included in said units of audio or video programming.