Patent attributes
A peer-to-peer (P2P) video-on-demand (VoD) system or method use a plurality of LP-enabled VoD set-top box (STB) peers in a pool for providing video content data to a requesting client peer in the pool. One other peer in the pool can be designated as a parent peer for downloading high priority playback content that is substantially immediately needed for playback display. Low priority pre-fetch content can be downloaded to the requesting client peer from another peer in the pool other than the parent peer. Bandwidth at the requesting client peer that is not used by the playback module for downloading the high priority playback video content data can be allocated for downloading the pre-fetch content. Using the requesting client peer, video content data can be served, for the playback display on a video monitor, wherein such served video data content can comprise the playback content and the prefetch content.
