Time-shifted broadcast delivery

The present invention provides a network based time-shifting architecture where broadcast content is replicated and delivered toward subscribers at different times in different content streams. In operation, a content source delivers unshifted content over a network to a media server, which replicates the unshifted content to provide multiple content blocks. Each content block represents a time-shifted content block of the unshifted content, and as such each time-shifted content block will have essentially the same content. At different times, each time-shifted content block is delivered over a transmission network toward the same or different subscribers. In one embodiment, the time-shifted content blocks are delivered directly or through an encryption function to a multicast server, which controls delivery of the different time-shifted content blocks to television clients of the subscribers.