Computing systems are commonly employed by users to obtain and consume various types of media content, such as videos, audio files, and images. Numerous technologies and standards exist that are employed in various contexts in downloading and consuming media content. Some such technologies and standards pertain to unicast transmission of media content, which involves transmission of media content from one source to one destination. Other such technologies and standards pertain to multicast transmission of media content, which involves transmission of media content from one source to multiple destinations. Multicast transmission may offer improvements in transmission efficiency, and/or the advantageous reduction of bandwidth consumption. Due to wide variation in the capabilities of various computing systems used to consume media content, variation in user subscription profiles, and variation in the qualities and capacities of communications channels used to transmit media content from content suppliers to content consumers, suppliers of media content may make multiple versions of media content available for consumption. Different versions of a particular media content item may correspond, for example, to different underlying bit rates, different resolutions, different quality layers, and/or different views. Each media content version may be suited to a number of media content consumers. In order to take advantage of the benefits of multicast transmission while providing multiple versions of media content, techniques for improved multicast content delivery may be desirable.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds