Patent ID: 8510458

Claim:
A method of sending at least one item of information relative to a multimedia data stream in a communication network from a server device to a client device that receives a plurality of multimedia data streams from different server devices, comprising the following steps carried out on one of the server devices capable of sending at least one of the multimedia data streams over the network: obtaining at least one item of information relative to the at least one of the multimedia data streams, said at least one item of information relative to the at least one of the multimedia data streams comprising visual quality information on a visual quality of the multimedia data stream, and bandwidth information making it possible to obtain the bandwidth necessary for sending the multimedia data stream with that visual quality; sending said at least one obtained item of information over the communication network to a client device; and receiving from the client device a request specifying a visual quality called priority visual quality and/or bandwidth for the multimedia data stream to be sent to the client device based on the management of the video quality and/or bandwidth of the multimedia video streams from the different servers transmitting their multimedia video stream simultaneously to the client device, wherein the priority visual quality is of a higher visual quality than the quality of the other multimedia video streams, and the visual qualities of the plurality of multimedia video streams received by the client device are represented by a metric based on the priority visual quality, the average value of the visual qualities of the other multimedia video streams simultaneously transmitted, and the variances of the visual qualities of the other multimedia video streams.