Mininova to Launch BitTorrent Video Streaming
The 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
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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 http://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 ;)
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