Improved techniques for managing image data associating with asset records
in an electronic media programs catalog list between a media server
(e.g., a video-on-demand server) and a terminal device or a client system
(e.g., a set-top box) is disclosed. The catalog list is created by a
module and displayed on a terminal device. Each of the asset records
represents a media program that the user can browse. Each of these media
programs may associate with a graphical image data, which is also
displayed, when the user browses at that particular record. The image
data are stored on the media server with a portion duplicated in an image
windowing cache on the terminal device. The image windowing cache is
intelligently filled by a predictive pre-fetch operation in the
background while the user browses a particular record. The predictive
operation ensures additional n images are pre-fetched in user scroll
direction.