Mininova to Launch BitTorrent Video Streaming
Written by Ernesto on March 19, 2008The popular BitTorrent site Mininova is currently Beta testing BitTorrent powered video streaming. The new streaming feature allows users to watch videos instantly, streamed from .torrent files.
The new feature will be integrated into the featured torrents section, which lists all the distributors taking part in Mininova’s content distribution platform.
The Open Source “swarmplayer” which is used for the video streaming service is developed in collaboration with the Tribler team from the Technical University Delft and Free University Amsterdam. Tribler is also working together with the BBC and several other European broadcasters, and they recently received a $22 million grant for P2P research from the European Union.
The swarmplayer has also been demonstrated for a 100+ audience of media industry insiders in Geneva at the European Broadcaster Union event on Open Internet TV this week. The streaming magic comes from replacing the tit-for-tat algorithm with Give-to-Get. Tribler project leader Johan Pouwelse stated after his keynote speech at the conference: “the attitude of several key media stakeholders in Europe are shifting and they are now exploring P2P on a serious scale.”
Mininova is still looking for people to test the streaming service, as Erik writes: “We are looking for people who would like to be in the first testing group who test the software, report suggestions and bugs you find. Please reply in this topic if you want to participate in this closed beta.”
Mininova already has a music streaming feature for their content distribution platform, based on the Java applet developed by Bitlet. The site currently has over 300 premium publishers, and Mininova’s CEO Niek told TorrentFreak last month that they will focus on extending and improving their content distribution service.
“Publishers will see more distribution options in the near future, and users will be able to find featured content easier. Our plan is to offer the most sophisticated and scalable distribution service of the future. Functionality of “regular” torrent files will of course be kept as it is now.”
Over the past months we have seen more and more P2P streaming alternatives. One of the main problems seems to be that it is practically impossible to make a high quality video streaming service profitable because of the immense bandwidth costs but P2P streaming solves this problem.
Previously: The Pirate Bay to BBC: We Don’t Want To Be Information Slaves
Next: Publisher Posts Mac Books on The Pirate Bay
57 Responses
Awesome! Really good to see the EU funding P2P research all we need now is for them to sought the law out!
Its too bad scene releases are stupidly in archived pieces, so that means any streamable media from these sources will have to be unarchived and a new torrent re-made. Makes it difficult to have critical mass when you have a scene release with RAR and another without. When will scene pirates just release the video file? If you want credit, put your scene NFO inside the video file.
I want to use VLC! I wont install another media player just for this one purpose, more likely to download the whole thing and then watch.
I’d rather download it and watch it. Not too fond of streaming.
VoD torrents? I’m in! :)
I won’t try .
using bt at behind is same as download . anyone that watch copyrighted infringement movie/tv can be trace and sue
Are these guys stupid? You need to use a special player? HOW FUCKIN RETARDED CAN YOU GET? The BitLet thing has to act as streaming hub which exposes the stream over a standard protocol like RTSP that every good player can handle. I actually don’t see why you need any software for this at all though. Just add some preference for chunks that allows linear front-to-back reading through the file in realtime and use a frickin (don’t say FUCK it’s a bad word!) player for the partial file. Every player that can play from a pipe (not the internet pipes but sockets you know duh!), can do this. Since every bittorrent downloader can already selectively download single files from a torrent, “streaming” should be trivial, it’s just the same in green – chunks instead of files.
I wonder whether streaming shouldn’t be limited to mobile use because with todays disk sizes, streaming is just a waste of bandwidth whenever you want to watch something (or a part thereof) just twice. Also occasionally torrents get stuck at 90% for a while because all seeders left. That’s not much of a problem for downloads but if you’re stuck while watching a stream that sucks quite a lot. Luckily, most torrents today live actually quite long but they are usually only seeded fast enough while they are hot.
Streams are bad for long-time access anyway because few to none will save them and keep them on a disk. So this content might rarely become accessible elsewhere as download and if someone decides to pull the stream, the content is gone. Just look at old TV content for example. If it’s not broadcast again or released on DVD/GayRay, it’s virtually lost or you have to rely on a handful of people who have a godforsaken VHS copy or worse a MPEG-1 video encoded from a VHS source. An video or audio file made available through file-sharing, on the other hand, once uploaded can easily live forever because it’s not streamed and many people keep it and upload it again in all kinds of places. If many or most people find streaming more convenient, we can say bye-bye to ubiquitous P2P file-sharing because we’re once again stuck with centralized distribution.
I don’t really see the difference between streaming and downloading. Except that I need more bandwith for streaming. So, those who can’t afford a fast/broad connection get cut off the participation in culture again.
[quote comment="314751"] … [/quote]
I agree.
It’s also nice to see Mininova adding to positive aspects of bittorrent and P2P technology. You know instead of just taking or trying to profit from the site as much as possible. Good times indeed!
This sounds awesome, it’ll be great for checking the quality and whatnot before downloading too.
So this will only be for the featured torrents?
@Fugazi
With a streaming player, your client will be tuned to request the parts of files that are coming up in the video, allowing you to watch any video file in a torrent file near immediately, along with jumping around position. In normal/traditional bittorrent, clients would exclusively request the least available piece of the file (for a robust swarm).
@Peter
I imagine a “finish me off” button on the stream (that would download the remaining parts of the torrent) and then save it to a file would be easy to provide. You’re already downloading it to your memory (or a tmp file), to view the movie in your browser. So have your cake (streamed video while in the middle of downloading) and eat it too (keep the entire torrent archive around locally for later use.
America sure likes spending money on their party in Iraq.
to the guys who say they would rather download torrents than stream:
this feature was probably implemented so users could stream some of the video before they downloaded to see if it was a fake or not. thus, you won’t be disappointed when you wait for the dl to finish, and you see it is a fake
Streaming actually fits very well with the intellectual property concept. It’s provided as a transient piece of information which will be gone in an instant. That makes it possible to sell that information many times. Mind you, many times to the same individual.
Much worse than the remixed and reissued music from the vinyl times, where you actually got a CD. We have been told to switch to CD because it’s sooo much better. Oh, yes. It is sooo much better to sell music more than once. As an album and then as a CD and then as an mp3. And now we don’t even get to keep the bits?
Without me!
[quote comment="314778"]@Fugazi
With a streaming player, your client will be tuned to request the parts of files that are coming up in the video, allowing you to watch any video file in a torrent file near immediately, along with jumping around position. In normal/traditional bittorrent, clients would exclusively request the least available piece of the file (for a robust swarm).[/quote]
Yes. And that’s the reason why bittorrent scales. Even for slow and narrow connections. It’s like trading football cards. You become interesting for others when you have rare cards to offer. If you are on the receiving end again you don’t offer anything you just have to swallow what is fed to you.
Its legal content, like Azureus Vuze. If you expect to be able to stream the latest piece of shit to hit the theatres in the US via this sevice you obviously dont grasp the concept.
Like Ernesto, I’ve been testing this for a week or two. It works well, better with tstream files than with .torrent files, obviously, but both work. It’s pretty nice.
[quote comment="314808"]Its legal content, like Azureus Vuze. If you expect to be able to stream the latest piece of shit to hit the theatres in the US via this sevice you obviously dont grasp the concept.[/quote]
They are wasting their time making this this service then lol we allready got vuze that sucks ass
Why, becuase its legal and you get no satisfaction unless its infringing copyright? Does it take all the fun out of downloading for you? Or perhaps the content is not to your liking?
I’m not gonna say that the mininova thing is pointless, but I’d rather have the ability to use this on any torrent I want. Since the tribler people are developing it, I asume it’ll be open sourced, unless money changes there opinion.
So… Scene releases of movies that are in .rar parts are out of the question??
Count me out, I wouldn’t wait weeks to stream a shitty AXXO rip.
The very old scene still uses .RAR files for FTP spreading (hello – we have 2008, GB spaces exploded, stop that .rar shit). But I see new scene members in the sky who also don’t like this .rar shit. Its ok for software or other stuff that is compressable but not for a divx/xvid/avc! STOP THIS RAR SHIT NOW!
How do they intend to keep the torrents seeded? Most people will just watch the video and instantly close the player.
Personally I don’t really want to stream 350MB+ files, when downloading them is far more flexible/reliable..
OMFG!
lol so i´ll seed my 1080p mkv with like 10 gb to somebody who won´t seed after seeing it ?! YEA RIGHT .. so how can i ban this “player/client” ?! ..
Hi,
i’m Freek Zindel from the Tribler Project.
The SwarmPlayer is a stripped down and tuned version of the Tribler p2p client. In essence it is a download core that supports bittorrent downloads + our Give-to-Get extension that allows tit-for-tat like incentives for streaming media. On top of this core we use VLC.
No wories about multiple downloads if you want to keep the file. The SwarmPlayer has a “Save” button that allows you to save any media that you are streaming.
@26: you got the point
G’Morning freek.
@5
This feature will only work on the featured torrents on MiniNova which are 100% legit and legal.
Nobody is out to get you, so cut the paranoid crap
[quote comment="314784"]to the guys who say they would rather download torrents than stream:
this feature was probably implemented so users could stream
some of the video before they downloaded to see if it was a fake or not. thus, you won’t be disappointed when you wait for the dl to finish, and you see it is a fake[/quote]
TV is downloaded from EZTV, never seen a fake there.
[quote comment="314916"]The very old scene still uses .RAR files for FTP spreading (hello – we have 2008, GB spaces exploded, stop that .rar shit). But I see new scene members in the sky who also don’t like this .rar shit. Its ok for software or other stuff that is compressable but not for a divx/xvid/avc! STOP THIS RAR SHIT NOW![/quote]
Rar is practical for FTP, but not for BitTorrent. It is not about the number of GB’s you have, it is about beiing able to download just a small file if anything goes wrong. Yes, BitTorrent-clients take care of that but the scene doesn’t use BitTorrent.
This is a step forward, i see the future as an unlimited reasonably priced ($30/mo?) subscription based on-demand service, get anything you want whenever you want.
Rarely do i watch the same video twice and dont mind paying for the convienience, however should have a save option cos anything along the lines paying for the same thing twice (bandwidth or rentals like streaming) is bullshit.
Better = http://www.itiva.com
I see a problem with rar files aswell, I’m also wondering if this’d work with private trackers?
http://www.reeltime.com is already streaming movies using P2P. Way ahead of the curve.
ReelTime is a publicly traded co. streaming P2P, going to spank them all. Torrents are good for PCs, set-top boxes are better for TVs. http://www.reeltime.com
Here is more detail about the Give2Get (Give To Get) that swarmplayer is based on:
http://tv.seas.harvard.edu/research.php
Says Leeching will not be productive.
this is obviously a great idea. anyone that dosent agree is moronic. people want to view the video NOW i m glad your on your fast connection and have patience to download something if its slow but guess what? i do not. if i want to watch a movie i want to do it right away, and if this allows it, then so be it. as for rar files FUCK YOU. scene people are so fucking annoying. ohh hardy har har ill rar my movie and put a nfo file of useless bullshit no one cares about. newsflash!!!! no one gives a shit who released the movie or what ur fucking shitty name is. fuck off. your worse then then the people who make keygens with there shitty keyboard music. wtf seriously. my ears bleed at your shitty musical talents.
Small remark, officially it is: Delft University of Technology.
http://tudelft.nl/en
o shit, dat looks fuckin good hehe, bye bye stage 6, nd welcome mininova streaming woooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Swarmplayer + mininova + ads= awesome for the EU
This could be a good thing for the next generation of streaming sites. Think about watching series like Heroes, Dr. House etc online when you want and where you want. 50% of BT traffic is for tv series! These 50% would/could use streamingsites aswell. ;)
Most of you guys have the wrong idea…This is being made mainly for featured downloads, meaning ‘legal’ content. A lot of this legal content is really good actually and so I support this. After all, isn’t that what we’re for? Freedom of gratuitous information?
You guys complaining about it not working with rar files, that’s more than likely correct, however as I stated above, it wont matter because most of those releases are from the scene, which usually isn’t ‘legal’ content.
Of course, this technology could possibly be implemented into ‘other’ stuff if you catch my drift.
Also, about streaming vs downloading, you have to realize that it’s not a question about which one is better. Streaming in this situation is a more casual approach to receiving certain content, it’s not meant to replace traditional downloads. Maybe you feel like checking out a certain movie without having to wait for it to finish downloading, then you can stream it. What if you want to keep it, possibly burn it to a DVD? Then you would download it.
@adam: While I /kind/ of agree with you, you shouldn’t bash the scene that harshly. After all they’re responsible for most of the content you download. I mean if you hate them so much, avoid them, but honestly it’d be pretty difficult unless you only download home-made rips and the like which is usually of much lesser quality (In fact, it would mean virtually no keygens or cracks). The reason that some releases are in multiple rar files (As far as I know) is because the scene uploads and shares their stuff through FTP. Through FTP, it’s a lot more convenient to upload multiple small sized archives instead of a complete multiple GB file. Just imagine this, you’re towards the end of the transfer and your connection goes out. If you were uploading various small archives, you would just continue where you left off, on the other hand, if you were uploading one big file, you would have to start your transfer over completely.
Now, an important thing to realize is that a good portion if not all of the scene dislikes the BitTorrent community, so it’s not like its their job or that they purposely release their stuff onto BitTorrent. As far as I know, it is certain people who ‘leak’ the releases onto BitTorrent, some could face punishments. Now, usually these releases are uploaded to BitTorrent already unpacked, however a few lazy ‘leakers’ might simply upload the rar files all in one go, which is why you see all those rar files sometimes.
All we need now is for software to be able stream LIVE EVENTS (sports, news, etc) on a massive scale. If that can be done, you remove the other big advantage traditional TV streaming has over Internet video streaming.
> if you were uploading one big file,
> you would have to start your
> transfer over completely.
FTP can resume files where you left off in case of disconnect. RAR splits is more likely due to post size limits for Usenet Newsgroup.
The reasons the scene uses rars mainly are for redundancy and competitive racing.
For redundancy, every scene release is accompanied by an .sfv which the FTP daemon uses to verify each file uploaded. Similar to hash checks implemented in the torrent protocol.
As for the competition, there is an entire part of the scene called couriers whose job is to spread the releases to as many scene sites as possible, as fast as possible. They are rewarded on how much they send. If a release group just uploaded a single 4gig file, only one courier would be credit for it on each site, and if some packets are lost and the sfv fails, you’d need to wait for someone else to upload the entire 4 gig file.
The scene has been around far far longer than the torrent or even p2p community, as have the rules that govern the way things work. Rars and sfv checks will be around for many many years.
In response to Stim, all scene sites I was ever one (some 7 years ago) resume was definitely not enabled, and by the time you realized you got disconnected, the race was over ;)
As of now it’s a waste of valuable bandwidth. Reliable HD-quality on-demand streaming belongs to the era of 1Gbps synchronous connections available to everyone. We’re not quite there yet.
So far it’s easier to d/l a movie and watch it when you want it. It’ll cost you the same amount of traffic, storage is hardly a problem these days, and if you don’t like it you can always delete it.
Check this too !
http://pluking.blogspot.com
hmm… if i had 4 times my current internet speed id definitely go for it… maybe the program will allow you to download it while you watch it so you can keep sharing it after downloaded…
my blog
http://radonadi.blogspot.com
[quote comment="314784"]to the guys who say they would rather download torrents than stream:
this feature was probably implemented so users could stream some of the video before they downloaded to see if it was a fake or not. thus, you won’t be disappointed when you wait for the dl to finish, and you see it is a fake[/quote]
@39
You, sir, are nothing but a dumb ungrateful swine. If there were no scene, you’d get no releases at all. So STFU and take what you’re given by the people who do the real job. And don’t forget to say thanx to them next time.
@53
It’s been ages since I downloaded a fake via BT. Maybe I’m just lucky or maybe I know right places. ;-)
this technology is nown. an israeli companey as allready tested this technology in the past year. their alfa was great and now the beta is going to deliver shortly.
their website is : http://www.streamsoft.co.il
check out http://MeTorrents.com
foxtorrent, already does this
all xvid divx files can be streammed if you have fast bandwidth, and lots of swarm speed
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