Patent ID: 8898718

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; and a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith and executable by the at least one processor, the computer readable program code comprising: computer readable program code configured to assimilate videos at a video multiplexer for separate transmission to a plurality of mobile clients in communication with a base station in a broadband wireless network or wireless wide area network; computer readable program code configured to estimate playout lead for each video, the playout lead comprising time for a corresponding one of the mobile clients to play out a client buffer without receiving additional data at the corresponding one of the mobile clients; wherein to estimate playout lead comprises determining a number of video frames to be played out by the corresponding one of the mobile clients, via employing an epoch-by-epoch client buffering scheme, each epoch comprising a fixed duration of time; said computer readable program code being configured to employ the epoch-by-epoch client buffering scheme via using a playout lead determined in a previous epoch; and computer readable program code configured to transmit the videos from the video multiplexer to the plurality of mobile clients based on the estimated playout lead.