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by yetihehe 809 days ago
> And in theory, the head end could start the stream with an I-frame (otoh, it may not have the processing power to decode/encode).

Some systems already do this. When I change channel on my iptv, it immediately shows static frame (looks like last known iframe) and starts sound, then after up to 2s starts playing video, probably waits for next iframe because you can't start decoding from middle of stream anyway.