Milestone synchronization in broadcast multimedia streams

In a broadcast system for delivering entertainment content to clients over multimedia content streams, each stream characterized in that stream rendering cannot commence until a milestone data structure has been received, a synchronization unit comprising:

• a circular buffer;
• a finder for detecting all milestone data structures in the specified multimedia content stream;
• a receiver for placing the packets from the specified multimedia content stream at the end of the buffer as they arrive, and keeping track of the position of the milestone data structures in the buffer;
• a sender for creating a marker in the buffer at the most recent milestone data structure relative to the time of arrival of the request, and for sending each next content packet from the position indicated by the marker,
• wherein the receiver places the packets in the buffer at a first rate and increments the marker at a second rate, higher than the first rate, until the marker position catches-up with the position of the last packet placed in the buffer.

A method for delivering entertainment content to receivers over multimedia content streams, each stream characterized in that stream rendering cannot commence until a milestone data structure has been received, comprising:

• a) listening for a request indicating that a client wishes to receive a specified multimedia content stream carrying content of interest;
• b) streaming to the client the content of interest in an outgoing stream, starting with a most recent milestone data structure in the specified multimedia content stream with respect to the request receipt time;
• c) synchronizing the outgoing stream with the specified multimedia content stream;
• and
• d) switching the client form receiving the outgoing stream to receive the specified multimedia content stream once the streams are synchronized.