Content providers, such as television companies, may multicast adaptive bitrate content, using playlist-oriented streaming techniques, to recipient devices (such as set-top boxes (“STBs”)). In a playlist-oriented streaming technique, segment files (e.g., segments of the content) may correspond to predetermined time segments. In order to mitigate lag time, when a channel is selected by a user of an STB, which may ordinarily be caused by the nature of playlist-oriented streaming techniques, an STB may obtain content, associated with the selected channel, via a unicast, non-playlist-oriented technique. Once the next segment file has been received by the STB, the STB may cease obtaining the content by the unicast technique, and may use the segment files received via multicast.