A broadcast technique for providing better VCR-like interactions in a periodic broadcast environment

Video-cassette-recorder-like (VCR) capabilities such as jumping to a specific frame or fast forwarding a video are becoming essential services in video-on-demand (VOD) applications. To provide VCR functionalities in a broadcast environment, current techniques depend on data prefetching. However, a fast-forward or a fast-backward of a video for several seconds would certainly exhaust the prefetch buffer because the prefetching rate cannot sustain typical speeds. In this paper we address this practical problem where each video and its interactive version are broadcast repeatedly on the network. For example, interactive versions might contain only every fifth frame in the original videos. We propose a new technique that leverages these "interactive" broadcasts to provide better VCR service.