ABKNALLENDMITTEL MIT VERBESSERTER LATENZ

The present invention relates to a zapping agent that receives a zap signal from a particular user, whereby a new channel is requested. A zapping agent according to the invention caches, as a background task, the last-forwarded GoP of the new channel into memory, and upon receipt of the zap signal, resumes transmission from the first frame of that GoP onwards. As soon as a new anchor frame is available for further forwarding, the zapping agent stops transmitting frames from the cache memory, and starts forwarding the real stream. This may result in a small mismatch (visual glitch). Yet, by so doing, the decoder can start displaying moving pictures of the new channel faster, thereby improving the system latency and the user experience. Such a zapping agent may form part of interalia an edge device, or a video server.