METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DISTRIBUTING CONTENT VIA A NETWORK TO USER TERMINALS

A method and apparatus for distributing content via a network to user terminals includes storing content in a store, the content having a probability value indicating the probability that the content will be required by the user terminals. The content is separated into segments, each segment being associated with a respective segment probability value derived at least from the probability value of the content. The segments are ranked using at least the respective segment probability values. During a time period when the network capacity is greater than at another time, the top J ranked segments, where J is related to the broadcasting bit rate and duration of the broadcast, are predictively broadcast to user terminals.