Patent ID: 8700792

Claim:
A method to expedite delivery of programming to a user over a broadband network, the method comprising: receiving a scalably encoded programming stream including a base layer and an enhancement layer; receiving from the user a request for programming over the broadband network; in response to the request, transmitting to the user over the broadband network a unicast stream in parallel to a corresponding multicast stream that includes the scalably encoded programming stream, wherein the unicast stream includes the base layer but not the enhancement layer, further wherein the base layer defines a reduced bit rate representation of the requested programming, wherein the reduced bit rate representation is encoded at a reduced bit rate and a lower spatial resolution rate relative to a normal representation of the requested programming that is encoded for transmission over the broadband network at a target bit rate wherein the unicast stream is transmitted at a rate faster than that of the multicast stream, wherein the enhancement layer is only decodable in conjunction with the base layer and contains references to the base layer to thereby generate the normal representation of the requested programming, said normal representation having an increased spatial resolution relative to the reduced bit rate representation of the base layer; and terminating transmission of the unicast stream at a time arising not before (i) the normal representation is multicast over the broadband network as a multicast stream and (ii) the unicast stream and the multicast stream are received by the user in temporal synchronization with one another.