Recent advances in storage technology, coupled with the dramatic incre
ase in the bandwidth of networks, now make it possible to provide ''vi
deo-on-demand'' service to viewers. A video-on-demand server is a comp
uter system that stores videos in compressed digital form and provides
support for various portions of compressed video data to be accessed
and transmitted concurrently. We present a low-cost storage architectu
re for a video-on-demand server that relies principally on disks. The
high bandwidths of disks in conjunction with a clever strategy for str
iping videos on them enables simultaneous access and transmission of p
ortions of a video, separated by fixed time intervals. We also present
schemes for implementing VCR-like functions including fast forward, r
ewind, and pause, and extend our schemes to the case in which videos h
ave different rate requirements.