Patent ID: 8625590

Claim:
A method for displaying multicast streams, the method comprising: receiving a first request to subscribe to a first multicast stream being transmitted in a network; responsive to receiving the first request, registering to receive the first multicast stream and a preview multicast stream, wherein the preview multicast stream includes interleaved frames of pre-recorded content from a plurality of distinct multicast streams, including the first multicast stream; based on the registering, receiving the first multicast stream and the preview multicast stream from a first-hop router; storing the preview multicast stream in a cache; displaying the first multicast stream and the preview multicast stream; receiving a second request to subscribe to a second multicast stream included in the plurality of distinct multicast streams associated with the preview multicast stream, wherein the second multicast stream is selected based on a selection of frames of the second multicast stream that are displayed as part of the preview multicast stream; responsive to receiving the second request, reconstructing pre-recorded content of the second multicast stream using the frames of the second multicast stream that are included in the preview multicast stream; displaying the pre-recorded content of the second multicast stream while registering to receive fresh content of the second multicast stream; based on the registering, receiving fresh content of the second multicast stream from the first hop router; and displaying the fresh content of the second multicast stream.