Providing VCR Functionality in a Constant Quality Video-On Demand Transportation Service
The use of bandwidth smoothing techniques for the deli very of prerecorded compressed video has been sho wn to be an ef fective technique in reducing the network bandwidth requirements needed to play back video. An y fixed allocation scheme can af fect the ability to allow for VCR functions. In this paper , we examine the impacts that bandwidth smoothing techniques ha ve on the deli very of stored video. We introduce the notion of VCR-windo w, which allows users to have full VCR functionality in a limited windo w while not requiring increases in the bandwidth reserv ations. In addition, we introduce a resource reserv ation scheme that can be used with the VCR-windo w f r the deli very of stored video. To test the applicability of the VCR-windo w in video-on-demand systems, we have digitized 15 full-length mo vies for experimental data. Our results indicate that we can pro vide time-limited VCR functionality while retaining a f irly high network utilization.