Bitrate control in virtual reality (VR) environments using time-shifting and unicast delivery

A gateway node operating to serve a subscriber premises via a managed bandwidth pipe, the gateway node configured to facilitate delivery of a plurality of media content channels to a corresponding plurality of virtual display (VD) screens presented in a virtual reality (VR) environment effectuated by a VR device of a subscriber, the gateway node comprising:

• one or more processors;
• a network interface for receiving one or more time-shifted (TS) media content channels as gapped unicast adaptive bitrate segment streams;
• a network interface for receiving one or more non-time-shifted (NTS) media content channels as gapped multicast adaptive bitrate (MABR) segment streams;
• a bandwidth policy manager, operating in association with the one or more processors, for effectuating IGMP Leave and Join operations relative to multi-bit representations of the TS and NTS media content channels;
• an ABR manifest generator for generating a manifest indicating single bit representations of each of the NTS media content channel segments stored in a segment cache of the gateway node;
• one or more persistent memory modules having program instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more processors, perform the following in association with one or more modules:
• facilitating receipt of stream weight updates from the VR device with respect to the TS and NTS media content channels, wherein the TS media content channels are configured to have null weights when the VD screens they are associated with are outside the subscriber's field of view in the VR environment and the NTS media content channels are configured to have non-null weights when the VD screens associated therewith are at respective angular distances relative to a reference axis in the subscriber's field of view, and further wherein each VD screen is configured to receive a respective media content channel of the plurality of media content channels and the non-null weights of the NTS media content channels are updated based on the angular distance of the corresponding VD screens relative to the reference axis in the subscriber's field of view, and allocating bandwidth of the managed bandwidth pipe based on the updated weights of the NTS media content channels, taking into account the null weights of the time-shifted media content channels, for delivering the media content channels to the VD screens within the subscriber's field of view inside the VR environment;
• and
• a TSTV controller operative to facilitate time-shifting of selected media content channels having null weight;
• and
• an HTTP server configured to deliver segments of the NTS media content channels at respective single bitrates selected based on a channel bandwidth annealing mechanism using the updated stream weights received from the subscriber's VR device.