We study low-delay error correction codes for streaming recovery over a class
of packet-erasure channels that introduce both burst-erasures and isolated
erasures. We propose a simple, yet effective class of codes whose parameters
can be tuned to obtain a tradeoff between the capability to correct burst and
isolated erasures. Our construction generalizes previously proposed low-delay
codes which are effective only against burst erasures. We establish an
information theoretic upper bound on the capability of any code to
simultaneously correct burst and isolated erasures and show that our proposed
constructions meet the upper bound in some special cases. We discuss the
operational significance of column-distance and column-span metrics and
establish that the rate 1/2 codes discovered by Martinian and Sundberg [IT
Trans.\, 2004] through a computer search indeed attain the optimal
column-distance and column-span tradeoff. Numerical simulations over a
Gilbert-Elliott channel model and a Fritchman model show significant
performance gains over previously proposed low-delay codes and random linear
codes for certain range of channel parameters