Patent ID: 8154988

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by an error repair delivery component, a program stream from a program source on a first channel; storing the program stream in a storage of the error repair delivery component; receiving, by the error repair delivery component, a first notification and subsequently a second notification from a client of unrecoverable error in a stream received at the client, the unrecoverable error corresponding to at least a portion of the stored program stream, wherein the first and the second notifications identify which portion of the stored program stream corresponds to the unrecoverable error in the stream received at the client, wherein the first notification is sent by the client when an errored packet in the stream is received and identifies the most recent non-errored packet in the stream, and wherein the second notification is sent by the client when a non-errored packet in the stream is received and identifies the most recent errored packet in the stream; determining, by error repair delivery component, a time at which bandwidth and resources, at the error repair delivery component, are available to transmit the corresponding portion to repair the unrecoverable error and are available to repair the unrecoverable error in the stream received at the client, wherein the time is based upon a threshold number of errored packets reported; extracting from the storage, in response to the notification, the portion of the stored program stream corresponding to the unrecoverable error at the determined time; and distributing, from the error repair delivery component, the corresponding portion of the stored program stream to the client on a second channel in response to the notification, wherein distributing the corresponding portion of the stored program stream is delayed until the time at which bandwidth and resources, at the client, are available to receive and process the corresponding portion of the stored program stream and to repair the unrecoverable error.