Abstract: An improvement on dynamic skyscraper delivery of continuous media programs, such as video, divides the channels used for the delivery of the video into leading and trailing groups. A cluster defining on transmission of a program can then be broken into mini-clusters in the leading group which may be freely matched to full clusters in the lower group with loosened alignment requirements. This decoupling provides more efficient allocation of bandwidth to on-demand consumer requests and permits strategic opportunities to merge requests with concurrently allocated bandwidth for similar programs.

Abstract: Preferred techniques for transmitting on-demand data files include transmitting a first data stream in response to a first client request, and a new data stream in response to a subsequent second client request. The second client may snoop increasing amounts data from the first data stream, thereby decreasing the second client's reliance on the second data stream until the client has merged with the first data stream, at which time transmission of the second data stream will be discontinued. Alternatively, a patch data stream may be broadcast to the second client having a bandwidth less than that of the first data stream. The second client, in addition to receiving the second data stream real-time, will record data from a patch data stream until the second client has merged with the first data stream, at which time transmission of the second data stream and patch data stream will be discontinued.

Abstract: Improvement on delivery of continuous media programs, such as video, divides the programs into prefixes and suffixes of data. One of these groups, or other groups associated with alternate on-demand data streaming, may be stored at a remote location, while the other of the groups may be stored at a plurality of regional locations. Accordingly, when the media program is ordered by a plurality of clients, a portion of the program will be broadcast from the regional server, while the other portion of the program will be transmitted from the remote server. The prefixes and suffixes are chosen so as to maximize the efficiency of data transfer taking into account the cost of storing the data as well as bandwidth costs.

Abstract: A method of efficiently transmitting streamed data of a program to multiple clients requesting the program at different times ranks the requests in a multilevel hierarchy, which describes merging of data streams servicing the requests. The multilevel hierarchy changes dynamically as new requests arrive or existing data streams are merged to reduce the bandwidth or other costs required to serve the requests. The hierarchy may be established by simple rules or by a modeling of the actual cost of possible hierarchies.