Patent ID: 7810124

Claim:
A method for use in a receiving apparatus for staggercasting a plurality of content representative signals, comprising using the receiving apparatus to perform the steps of: for each of the plurality of content representative signals: encoding a first signal representing the content; and encoding a second signal corresponding to the first encoded signal; generating a composite signal comprising the plurality of first and second encoded signals wherein each respective second encoded signal is delayed with respect to the corresponding first encoded signal; extracting the first and second encoded signal representing a selected one of the content representative signals to reproduce the selected content representative signal; decoding the extracted first encoded signal if an error is detected in the extracted second encoded signal, otherwise decoding the extracted second encoded signal; and when a different content representative signal is newly selected, decoding the first extracted encoded signal until the delayed second extracted encoded signal is available; wherein for each of the plurality of content representative signals, the steps of encoding the first and second encoded signals comprises inserting time information into both the first and second encoded signals; and when a different content representative signal is newly selected, the step of decoding the first extracted encoded signal until the delayed second extracted encoded signal is available comprises the steps of: extracting the time information from the extracted first and second encoded signals; and determining when the delayed second extracted encoded signal is available using the extracted time information.