Adaptive bitrate streaming techniques

A processing system including at least one processor may request, from an edge server, a plurality of video chunks for a plurality of segments of a video program to fill a video buffer, where the plurality of video chunks is encoded at a startup bitrate comprising a second lowest available bitrate of a plurality of available bitrates in accordance with an adaptive bitrate streaming protocol. The processing system may further receive, from the edge server, the plurality of video chunks, write the plurality of video chunks to the video buffer, and play out the plurality of video chunks from the video buffer when an occupancy level of the video buffer exceeds a threshold. In addition, the processing system may select a next video chunk for a next segment of the video program after the plurality of segments in accordance with a mapping function.