System and method for managing adjacent channels in an adaptive streaming environment

A client device, comprising:

• one or more processors;
• a bandwidth condition monitor;
• and
• a streaming client module coupled to the one or more processors, wherein the streaming client module includes instructions executable by one or more processors and configured to:
• determine one or more adjacent channels relative to a current streaming channel of the client device, the one or more adjacent channels being determined responsive to monitoring by the bandwidth condition monitor relative to a network connection between the client device and a content delivery network;
• pre-fetch metadata information associated with the one or more adjacent channels;
• responsive to the pre-fetched metadata information, pre-fetch and store initialization information for the one or more adjacent channels;
• and
• if the current streaming channel is changed to a new streaming channel, use the pre-fetched initialization information to fetch encoded media content pertaining to the new streaming channel.