Patent ID: 7668914

Claim:
In a broadcast system that delivers entertainment content to clients over multimedia content streams, wherein stream rendering for the multimedia content streams cannot commence until a milestone data structure comprising program guide and system information (PSI) and a packet marking a beginning of a full picture data structure has been received, a server comprising: a listening mechanism that detects requests from the clients, each of the requests indicating that a particular client wishes to receive a specified multimedia content stream carrying content of interest; a synchronization unit that streams to the particular client an outgoing stream with the content of interest, starting with a most recent milestone data structure in the specified multimedia content stream with respect to a request receipt time from the request receipt time until the outgoing stream is synchronized with the specified multimedia content stream; and a multicast feed that receives all of said multimedia content streams from a head-end over a broadband network and distributes each of the multimedia content streams to the particular client once the outgoing stream is synchronized with the specified multimedia content stream, wherein the most recent milestone data structure enables the particular client to immediately decode the content of interest from the outgoing stream, and the synchronization unit further comprises: a circular buffer; a finder that detects all of the milestone data structures in the specified multimedia content stream; a receiver that places packets from the specified multimedia content stream in the circular buffer as the packets arrive and keeps track of positions of the milestone data structures in the circular buffer; a sender that creates markers in the circular buffer that correspond to most recent milestone data structures relative to the request receipt times and sends the packets from positions indicated by the markers, wherein the receiver places the packets in the circular buffer at a first rate and increments the markers at a second rate, higher than the first rate, until the positions of the markers catch up with a position of a last packet placed in the circular buffer.