We propose a new Multimedia-on-Demand (MoD) system which provides broadcast, batch and interactive services concurrently. An analytical model is derived for the performance evaluation of this MoD system. Numerical results show that with proper design the system can provide better system performance than some previously proposed MoD systems.

For hybrid Multimedia-on-Demand (MoD) systems which support broadcast, batch and interactive services, the charging scheme employed plays an important role in the delivery of good service quality to users, while also determining the revenue generated for the service provider. In this letter a new charging scheme is proposed. This scheme provides the same quality of service to the users as previous charging schemes while providing higher revenue. Numerical results are presented to evaluate the performance of the new charging scheme in comparison with previous schemes.

In this letter, we study a hybrid Multimedia-on-Demand (MoD) system which provides broadcast, batch and interactive services. An analytical model for such an MoD system is provided. Numerical results show that with proper design, the system can provide better performance than those systems which only provide any subset of two services.

We study the user reneging behavior in a hybrid Multimedia-on-Demand (MoD) system, which provides both interactive and batch services. Reneging happens when users become reluctant to wait for a batch service and quit the service. They will either join the interactive service or quit the system. In this letter, the analytical model for the MoD system with user reneging behavior is provided. Numerical results show that the reneging behavior has a significant impact on system performance. Therefore, careful consideration on reneging behavior should be made for designing a MoD system.

In this letter, we take advantage of both types of Interactive and Batch services by considering a hybrid multimedia-on-demand (MOD) system which provides both services. Also, we propose two serving methods with an incentive charging scheme to optimize the coexistence of both services. Numerical results show that the proposed hybrid system outperforms both individual systems. In particular, the system provider receives more revenue by serving more users concurrently, while the users have a better viewing experience due to higher availability of contents.

Resource-demanding services such as Multi-media-on-Demand (MOD) become possible as Internet and broadband connections are getting more popular. However, as the sizes of multimedia files grow rapidly, storage of such large files becomes a problem. Since multimedia contents will generally become less popular with time, it is desirable to design a prediction algorithm so that the multimedia content can be unloaded from the server if it is no longer popular. This can relieve the storage problem in an MOD system, and hence spare more space for new multimedia files. In this paper, we analyse the MOD viewing trend in order to understand the viewing behaviour of users and predict the viewing trend of a particular category of multimedia based on the knowledge obtained from its trend analysis. In trend analysis, two additive regression models, exponential-exponential-sum (EES) and exponential-power-sum (EPS), are proposed to improve the fitness of the trend. The most suitable model will then be used for trend prediction based on four proposed approaches, namely Fixed Regression Selection (FRS), Continuous Regression Updating (CRU), Historical Updating (HU) and Continuous Regression with Historical Updating (CRHU). From the numerical results, it is found that CRHU, which is constructed by considering historical trend and new incoming data of viewing requests, is in general the best method in forecasting the request trend of a particular category of multimedia clips.

A multimedia content is usually read-only and composed of multimedia objects with their spatial and temporal specifications. These specifications given by its author can enforce the display of objects to be well organized for its context. When multimedia contents are serviced in network environment by an on-demand basis, the temporal relationship among the objects can be used to improve the performance of the service. This paper models the temporal relationship as a scenario that represents the presentation order of the objects in a scenario and proposes several scheduling methods that make it possible to rearrange the transmission order of objects in a scenario. As a result, system resources such as computing power and network bandwidth can be highly utilized. Since the temporal relationship of a scenario is static, it is possible to reduce the scheduling overhead of a server by pre-scheduling currently servicing scenarios. In addition, several simulation results are presented in order to compare and analyze the characteristics of the proposed methods.