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
62 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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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..
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