System and Method for Transmission of Programming on Demand

A method and system for providing programming on demand service to television subscribers. In a preferred embodiment, each group of viewers that requests a given program is coupled to a separate video "feed" of the program. Each individual feed shows the program at a different rate. In this manner a second group of viewers who begin viewing a program after a first group of viewers may "catch up" to the first group. Whenever such an "intersection" occurs, the groups are merged and view the remainder of the movie on a single feed. In this manner the total number of feeds to required to provide video on demand service to a large number of viewers is reduced.