Interaction with broadcast video

Mounir A. Tantaoui, Kien A. Hua, Simon Sheu

Abstract: In video-on-demand (VOD) applications, it is desirable to provide the user with the video-cassette-recorder-like (VCR) capabilities such as fast-forwarding a video or jumping to a specific frame. We address this issue in the broadcast framework, where each video is broadcast repeatedly on the network. Existing techniques rely on data prefetching as the mechanism to provide this functionality. This approach provides limited usability since the prefetching rate cannot keep up with typical fast-forward speeds. Fast-forwarding a video for several seconds would inevitably exhaust the prefetch buffer. We address this practical problem in this paper by repeatedly broadcasting the interactive versions of the videos. For instance, an interactive version might contain only every fifth frame in the original video. Our client software leverages these "interactive" broadcasts to provide better VCR service. We formally prove the correctness of this approach, and compare its performance to a prefetch method, called active buffer management. This scheme has been shown to offer, in the broadcast environment, the best performance to date. Our simulation results indicate that the new technique is superior in handling long-duration VCR actions.