Equitable quality video streaming for IP networks

We describe an equitable quality video streaming system where the video server dynamically selects between multiple versions of video content coded at different fixed quality levels, and dynamically selects transmission rates for each video session so that the network bandwidth is divided between concurrent users such that they receive equal video quality at each moment in time. By sharing the bandwidth in this way and allowing delivery to get arbitrarily ahead of decoding, equitable quality video streaming can significantly outperform constant bit rate coding and delivery, allowing 100% more video sessions to be delivered at the same overall perceptual quality.