BitTorrent to Launch Advertising Supported TV-network
BitTorrent Inc. has plans to launch a free, ad-supported TV-network by the end of this year. It will hereby be in direct competition with Joost and online video services like YouTube. It is unsure if BitTorrent’s current partners like Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox will also make their content available for the BitTorrent TV-network.
On a discussion panel at the OMMA Expo, Eric Patterson, BitTorrent’s general manager of consumer services, said:
“We see us moving to an advertising-supported model at the end of the year so people can consume TV shows in the same way they consume programs on television.”
A BitTorrent supported TV-network will have a great advantage compared to competing services, because it will be able to save on resources, and keep the bandwidth bills relatively low. Patterson did not disclose any further details on the upcoming TV-network. BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen told us that his company is working on streaming support for BitTorrent. It could be that this streaming version of BitTorrent will be used for the TV-network.
It is good to see that BitTorrent Inc is going for an ad-supported, instead of a pay per view model. Let’s hope that it will be more successful than the launch of their DRM infected video store.
Stay tuned for more.
