Movie Theater Streams 2K Resolution Film Using BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on July 11, 2009The MPAA has previously been critical of the negative effect it says BitTorrent has on the movie industry, but a recent experiment in a Norwegian movie theater shows that it might actually be of use to them. Researchers from The Far North Living Lab managed to stream a full 2K resolution film at 19mbit/s – with BitTorrent of course.
The Far North Living Lab started by the Northern Research Institute (Norut) aims to create a platform for digital creativity. Recently the lab kicked off with a spectacular experiment in which they used the (EU funded) Tribler BitTorrent client to stream a 2K resolution film onto the big screen.
The lab’s launch was held at a local movie theater where the film “Carved” by Jonas Rejman was projected, with consent from the copyright holder of course. To our knowledge this is a digital streaming world premiere for BitTorrent, and one that shows how the technology can actually help digital cinema and independent filmmakers.
Many independently produced films never make it onto the big screen simply because the costs involved are too high. At the moment most digital movies are distributed “over land” on hard disks costing up to $2000 for each copy. BitTorrent has the power to change this outdated distribution method and get smaller budget films onto the big screen.
The Far North Living Lab’s experiment shows that it’s even possible to stream movies if the connection is good enough, but Dr. Njål Borch, a senior researcher involved in the project added that downloading the film beforehand is probably a better option.
For this test run the researchers did not use a real-life BitTorrent swarm, since that would make it pretty much impossible to get the 19mbit/s download speed required to stream the film onto the big screen.
“We didn’t use a publicly available torrent, as not many would put out those kind of bitrates,” Borch told TorrentFreak. “We seeded it from our own computers including some local seeds in order to get the speed up, but we’re currently upgrading the connection to the cinema to a 1 Gig fiber optic cable that will allow us to perform these kind of experiments with no local seeds.”
The lab’s next stunt will be to stream a live concert to the city of Beijing as well as a few selected rural areas. “We want to participate in the world even though we are physically placed way beyond what most people find inhabitable,” Dr. Borch said. “We’re not afraid of the future, the Internet will not kill creativity. Quite on the contrary – we are very exited!”
We only hope that this excitement will get the movie industry interested, so BitTorrent can actually be used for what it’s intended – promoting unlimited creativity. The MPAA will probably be scared to death though, since it allows independent filmmakers to compete with large budget blockbuster productions.
BitTorrent enters the Movie Theater
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70 Responses
brilliant nice 2 see torrent being used 2 help .. and it would be nice 2 see the main stream news cover this story .. but i bet the mpaa wont like that so ill nott hold my breath
This is the future. Welcome home.
Awesome!
I can see the MPAA now, shitting their pants as their distribution model goes out the window. Now the cinemas have a new customer, who are far more open on what they show.
Unfortunately, I think it’s more than the cost of getting the movie to the theater that prevents independent films from being shown in more areas.
Movie theaters have a limited number of theaters to show movies in, and they’re going to fill them with blockbusters whenever they can. Although, some theaters might open up “after-hours” showings for independent films, which would be a win-win.
Personally, I think movie theaters are out-dated: Home theater systems are the future, where you don’t have to sit in a sticky chair or listen to babies cry.
very awesome, let this be the future!!
Is there any explanation why they used BitTorrent?
It seems to me that they might just as well have used (S)FTP or other means of streaming.
Did the lab publish a paper about the hows and whys?
2k res is amazing lol
2k! Nice! Looks like blu-ray is doomed
This would be good IMO… But why Bittorrent? It would be far easier for a producer to setup a good FTP server, with a good high quality connection, and let the theaters them selves download the movie, and replay it on the big screen, it would save in shipping costs, the cost of the drives or media, and, if the file is no longer needed, just press delete…
I am also sure there could be some form of security, like having a passcard to insert or password to type in, in order to play, and/or download the movie.
19mbits isnt unachievable as a download speed. private sites such as tl sct and ftn are capable of maxing gbit let alone that. that is reason they wud use bittorrent (or thier modified version) with a decent swarm u cud premiere worldwide within an hour of completing the special effects. other advantage is only equipment needed by cinema is digital projector, computer and internet connection.
Next up: MPAA tries to control and license the BitTorrent protocol.
@9 Why would blu-ray be doomed?
Are you expecting TV stations who only recently upgraded broadcasts to 1080p to be forced to upgrade again? How about the cable/FIOS companies? TV manufacturers? Computer Drive manufacturers?
Maybe you should spend more than 2 seconds thinking about technology turnover rates rather than spouting off.
for those saying that they should have used sftp to get such high speeds have forgot that in this expertiment they had only one leech, the cinema but when the leechs grow, you can’t feed them all with single ftp.
Those of you who want to contradict with me saying what about broadcasting? Broadcast will not let everyone start watching at a random time. In broadcast schedule will get fixed.
Kudos to experimenters.
@13 sometimes millions of dollars of research is worthless when a new technology comes, example Toshiba’s HD-DVD which got doomed coz Sony and Warner pooled together in favor of equally good blu-ray. So keep this lame argument that what about TV station who recently upgraded. Someone will start using the new better technology and would very soon become biggest market stakeholder. Don’t you recall how google captured altavista and yahoo’s search engine dominance or how gmail’s 1GB inbox kicked out every other mail service.
Tribler sucks.
his is exactly why the MPAA & RIAA want to put an end to torrents…
this threatens the very essence of their business!!! this litterlay can eliminate their contractor out of the picture…no pun intended…
so mafiaa eat this!;-)
Streaming? Heaven forbid… Next thing you know is you’re watching a movie and the cinema loses connection, so you can wait until the isp resolves the problem.
BUT I ONLY Have 5 megabit
sucks to be in canada
or have a cap or UUB
@18: Sanderman
LOL ROLF yeea you have right, a 404 connection time out error in the middel of the movie.
that could be good LOL
@ 13 Dimagus
Bluray is doomed. Every single piece of technology is doomed. At the rate of technological advancement we are currently at, expect every IT product in your house to become useless and defunct in the next 5/10 years, if not less.
Bluray in particular is going. In 2015 2K TVs will hit the market. 2020/25 will see 4K TVs. 10 Years ago DVDs were new, they were the future. That lasted. Everything gets old really quickly.
As we get better TVs, hollywood gets better quality, RED are releasing a 28K camera in the next few years.
I wonder what neo.stunned has to say about this. ;)
I thought P2P users were all criminals? I also wouldn’t be surprised if the MAFFIA threatens a lawsuit against them, because we all know, that finding a reasonable trade-off with the MPAA is like trying to agree with a child. No matter what you do, they always want it their away.
@13 : pirates rarely think before spouting off.
@21 : That’s not what doomed means. Blue ray will eventually get replaced by more advanced mediums, but that doesn’t mean it’s doomed….
@18 : that is exactly the reason that this will never catch on. Can you imagine how much bandwidth the ISP would need to stream movies to even a few theaters? Even with a few theaters the costs would be insane for their customers because they would have to pay for the insane amount of bandwidth. The current system ensures reliability and self sufficiency.
Bottom line : this is way too far ahead of it’s time and nothing more than a tech demo of some prospective tech concept.
I love how you have one proof of concept and everyone is celebrating it like the second coming.
Don’t understand why you’d want to stream a film for cinema use. Surely they’d want a copy which they can play over and over without worrying about their net connection.
I actually am a licensed projectionist and years ago I did a test with a Beta Max version of a film with a Barco projector and a film version of a movie. You couldn’t really tell the difference in the theatre. With todays digital projectors in offices around the world can display movies if not the same then better then in the movie theatres.
Years ago we had nemerus discussions on distribution vie DVD or similar technology like lazer disk and satelight instead of ~160 lbs of 35 milimeter film that is shipped in 12-16 film rolls of 20 minutes each which becomes scratched and useless after a couple months of multiple daily shows…in every instance and change request in the delivery or packaging of the film, unions, MPAA, Distributors would object, I have been out of the industry for a number of years but when I left they were still fighting on sening out the 160 lbs of film in 2 containers instead of 8 containers…this would only have saved 10 minutes in film splicing together but would have cost the industry, delivery and unions millions….I don’t think it was adobted….
MPAA and film distribution in the america market will rarely change…the MPAA and distributors have predetory pricing (80% gross ticket sales for first 4 weeks or so) on new movies normally, meaning the theatres don’t make anything unless the movie stays for >6 weeks… if it went to a digital distribution model, the control would shift to the theatres to say what shows they want to perform based on audience demand….eg..they have 12 theatres, and have already sold out the new blockbuster show in 2 of the theatres so they increase it to 4 theatres on the opening weekend, dropping 2 of the shows that didn’t sell many tickets…this would kill the MPAA because they would lose the physical control of what films can be seen were…
And also cut our all the middle men from the distribution channel that handle the films for the studios (movie printers, distributors, local resellers, etc). A whole set of industries would die if they switched to digital distribution. This would not only put the Film projectionist out of work (if there are any left) but would also force theatres to change all the film projectors in th theater to digital…too much money is already invested for either MPAA or the theatres to change to a good distribution model like Bit-Torrent (although it would have to be somewho encrypted)….
@24 @18, I think Bit-Torrent would bring an outdated model of film distribution to the public…you wouldnt need to stream it, as I agree, you would want a local media server that you would have a copy of it…this would allow anyone to have movies played without the physical reliability of a bunch of cans of film being delivered to you…It actually happens quite a bit that openening night some theatres are dark because of missing flights or delayed delivery or the film canisters to the movie theatre…so your argument that the current model is the best is crap.
Thank you Old Timer, your comment was very informative, my comment is similar: physical distribution of film rolls is extremely expensive and independant films can not afford it, some independant films even have had their entire budget less than the cost of making and distributing a physical film roll, anyone can afford a program to convert to a digital format though, many are free even. The MPAA would not want digital movies as a standard because they would lose their north american movie monopoly (Canada counts as domestic to the MPAA, there’s a Canadian film in Canadaian theatres once in a blue moon), it is the individual thatre managers choice ultimatley – or the choice of the chain owner – of what format to use.
If neither the MPAA or theatre owners are willing to do anything gutsy then it comes down to you: go ask your local thatre manager if they use digital film or not, how many independant films they show a year, etc. Tell them you know many people who would want to see more non-hollywood movies and that theatres should be more supportive of home-grown independant artists, especially since people looking for independant moves use the internet when they could have been watching it in their theatre (paying them).
really cool
@neo.stunned
The movie would only have to be streamed once and then it would be stored on a computer to be replayed as much times as they want.
Good lord, your stupidity continues to amaze me.
Besides, an HD movie can easily for on an SD-HD memory card these days.
Give your head a shake honey.
@10 c0rr0sive: Why should all the theatre’s download from 1 (ftp) sever?
That would be stupid! If they use BitTorrent they could download from each other, this means:
* Greater download speed
* Less brandwith (They download from the “local theater” instead of a sever across the world
* Able to download the movie if the sever crash (as the computer with the film have a ratio of >1.000)
1, or a few hundred, it’s called load balancing.
If they had the movie downloaded already, download speed would be un-needed. Bandwidth would be same, it would just be split up even more among people instead of one entity.
…buffering… lol
This is off-topic but how many of you are stupid enough to sign up for this Ipredator service now that TPB is going legal. hahaha.
For this test run the researchers did not use a real-life BitTorrent swarm, since that would make it pretty much impossible to get the 19mbit/s download speed required to stream the film onto the big screen.
====================================sorry but i gotta call bullshit on this one, i’ve had torrents go 30-40MB/s [yes megabyte not bit], and 19mbs is really only 1 main server needed, not serving more than 5 peers on 100mbit
ffs does no one else distro here?
Thats cool.. But Sad At The Same Time!… We could never do that in North America lol..
Heres a thought.. When we go to the movies and pay these rediculous prices we should all be able to bring USB sticks and get a free DRM Free dvd copy when we leave..
^^ I know is a pipe dream but would atleast bring alot of people into the theatres.. Probably kill cams etc..
talking about CAM prints, MPAA should spare those who make cam print. Do they think that people who are happy watching cam print would ever pay $10 for ticket+ more for high priced snacks, parking, fuel to reach cinema etc, etc.
I love how one little thing happens involving BitTorrent and everybody here jumps for joy and screams victory. “THE FUTURE IS NOW!” Heh, sorry folks, but I don’t see this as that big a milestone for the community. I wish it were, but it simply isn’t. Still, kudos to this theater for doing their part.
Neo.troll….
You say bandwidth will increase movie pricess…I call FUD.
Ok, basic math here each copy of a print for a 35mm movie can cost between $20-80k not including the distribution costs of that…if it costs more then $5 per download of a film to a theatre I would be surprised, even if they did do the 4k resolution…
With digital distribution, there would be no need to wait for prints, replace bad film reals or limit movies to someone that can pay up to $150k for a 2 hour movie to be processed…with digital media, I would argue that the costs of movies in the cinema would got down (if the theatres passed the costs on to comsumers) once the control of movies moves from the printers and major studios to the actual public…
I will point out I do not download movies or games, but am interested in the technology and that I borrowed a copy of Donny Darko from a friend many years ago that cost 4.5 mil to produce but only made 4.1 mil in the theatres because of limited release (it didn’t even make it to most areas) That movie saw a wider audience on usenet then it did in the theatres because of limited copies of the movie and that distribution and printing were too costly….the star…Jake Gillenhall….look where he is today.
Movies that might not do well in the theatre might be caused by the archaic distribution and production and if after 4 weeks there was a groudswell of word of mouth of the movie then more people would go to the cinema…I remember Ghost coming to the cinema (yes I am old) and we booked it for 4 weeks at 60% to the studio…after 4 weeks it dropped to 20% after 8 weeks I think…it stayed for I believe 24 weeks and was sold out almost every night…the theatre made lots of money and the studio didn’t…
The current model of contracts I personally believe is outdated and doesn’t allow for smaller budget films to get to the audience…this is where bit-torrent is coming to the front…
Oh, and I remember Godzilla….we booked it at 80% revenue for 4 weeks in our biggest two cinemas…we couldn’t even fill the first cinema after opening weekend…it was such a crappy movie…we were stucj with it for 8 weeks but luckily we only had to have it in our two 350+ seat theatres for the first 4 weeks and we didn’t lost that much…
Over hypes films are ones that normally suck…and after being in the industry for +12 years, you can see what is going to fall on the floor and shouldn’t have been released….or even cookie cutter movies or retreds.
BitTorrent would be a perfect distribution for movies. Imagine it…Theater owner gets an email a few days before a major release with a .torrent link that will only work with a proprietary client(it would have to be proprietary for the movie industry to ever think about it). The theater downloads, along with 1000 other theaters the new release and its displayed on as many screens as they want.
@42 Rich,
Yes, that is a good idea…as long as it is encrypted and the media that is local to the theatre is watermarked and somehow protected I can see it as a viable alternative….
The problem is that theatres have a huge investment in the 35mm projectors that are now completly automated that you feed the film in and set the timer you can run 12-20 theatres with an Usher…or even from your office by pushing a button and then makeing sure the the focus is on….
Theatres will not change unless their is a demand for new distribution or guarenteed revenew models…their cash cow is the MPAA that limites the movies that are released so they don’t have to make many risky choices…
Sorry to keep posting but just got back from a movie and another thought…with digital distribution, the theatre can judge what theatres a movie should play in based on ticket sales, I don’t know anyone that doesn’t book their tickets online for the theatre now before showing up, so if a theatre is hitting at 80% if seats, they can move to a bigger theatre and move a movie that is not that full to a smaller theatre…with current contract with the MPAA and distributors that is not possible, but with digital distribution and the ease at which you can move the display of the movie from one projector to another made easier, this will allow for theatres to maximize audience where the old model and contract would not allow…no sense in turning away patrons when you have 2 screens already filled when you have 2 or 3 cinemas almost empty…
It would be a win for both cinemas and the film producers if they got rid of the middle men….
man the diarea is coming out tonight…Transformers, 9910 screen on the first opening week, that costs conservative estimate for just film costs for prinint was around $200 million for the printing of the movie for those almost 10k screens…if someone can provide a more reliable cost for prining a 2 hour movie please let us know…
Thanks,
Old Timer, a local independent theater in my town went out of business because of something to do with how the big chains have deals with the big indie distributors that lock in the chain’s dibs on films, even if they don’t run the movies. This allows them to keep competitors from running the films until they’ve already run at the chain or until interest in them has faded. I don’t see how digital distribution will circumvent these sweetheart deals. Wondering what your thoughts are on that.
OF COURSE they had to document it with an out-of-focus cam. It just wouldn’t feel right otherwise.
I am giving up a lot here, but we had the international film festival every year and for a week it was block solid with people……distributors control what is being played (through deals with the theatres) on the screens…we used to have one screen a week dedicated to Canadian content, but were forced by others to drop that because it was “unprofatible”….
actually some nights the independant film was the biggest group of seats…it was actually funny we we called out numbers at the end of the night to the movie tracker (which we had to do by contract every night) that their movie sucked and that some independing film beat them…all in all the theatre is a social event and out bosses always said that we have to project that it was because with the new technology, if it wasn’t a social even and that people didn’t see it as an escape from their home life theatres would die…all our marketing was for that or to that.
@46 That is common believe it or not…distributors will hold off of sending out the film to “second run theatres” because they are under orders to make sure that each area is only served up from one cinema…
We had numerouse issues with our theatres when a competing paramount theatre sucked, and people wanted it in our theatre and they were disapointed because it was shown in a 2 screen paramount theatre with crappy 70’s seats and projection….
@46 sorry I didn’t answer you question…the sweet hard deals are the problem with the movie industry…if theatre owners could say…friday nights are date night so we will do date movies and x night is sci fi…then pay the movies studios the money based on attendance that is warrented in stead of tying up a theatre for a movie that sucks based on hype…I think Indy films would do well in that scenario…
Sweethard deals are like political contributions…the theatres are doing it for their own survival but don’t like it…if you got rid of the need for 35mm print then you can do a complete digital distribution that would get rid of dead wood but also allos for greater access to non-holywood movies depending on the area/.
Can anyone explain how they streamed a full resolution 2K image at 19Mbit/s? A Bluray disc at full resolution is 40Mbit/s and that isn’t even 2K resolution (though it’s relatively close). But unless they somehow shrunk the bitrate (read: “compressed the image”) that doesn’t sound very plausible.
I’m all for improving the technology, and maybe one of the only people that actually works in the film industry that isn’t afraid of change, but I don’t think the math on this adds up. And while most of the audience that downloads movies doesn’t seem to notice or worry about a lot of the awful artifacts that come with compression, those of us that do see it and care would like to see them go (are you listening bittorrent?)
#51: Bluray is already highly compressed. With a good codec & source you can achieve better quality than bluray @ smaller size. Depends on the specifics.
uh, they stream 4k at a theater here, and don’t use BitTorrent. so who cares?
I’m in regional Western Australia and i have been told for some time that the local cinema (yes there is only one) has a 100mb satellite connection which they use to get their movies… now i just need to focus on breaking their wireless key…
http://www.entertane.com – the easiest site for torrents (movies, music, software, games, xxx) – faster, simpler – and you can search all your favorite torrent sites. No registration needed.
oh god this idiot that hates entertane is spamming here now… remember to whip ur ass when u leave…
The tools to make great movies are just comming to the great audience, hollywood would have to get fit to compete with little joe creating content on his basement and distributing it through other means.
I just can’t stop thinking that all the **IAA are just like GM and will have a crash course in economics really soon.
HOLY SHIT I had no idea movie theaters were still using film.
I figured at the time the moviemakers switched from film to digital the distributors and theaters would have done the same.
HOLY SHIT 35mm is ridiculous.
[quote]“We’re not afraid of the future, the Internet will not kill creativity. Quite on the contrary – we are very exited!”[/quote]
Myself, I would be more excited than exited.
Anyhow, the swarm wasn’t real. From a technical point of view, if this were to happen in everyday cinemas, the film would have to be streamed from a swarm that could offer equal or higher speeds for this to work. So this doesn’t really prove much, TBH.
They should try using a private torrent and stream the film to several screens simultaneously. 19mbps is a breeze; you wouldn’t believe the internal data traffic bandwidth among seeders in the biggest torrent distro groups :P
Those 35mm projectors should be retrofitted to also allow dvd/card playback. More options more better.
Then the one thats best for project at hand could be used.
@61 it is not that easy to retrofit these projectors…the Xenon or Argon bulbs cost $10-20k a piece and the way that the film passes through the film gate doesn’t lend itself to a digital projection.
most digital projectors now couldn’t throw the picture the length of the theatre with enough light, but I am sure there are ones out their that could…
Retrofiting is probably not an option especially with all the computerization of the 25mm projector now…most theatres would have to buy new projectors to play the movies and new projectors cost up to a million a piece.
2k or 4k, still doesn’t replace film
i hate knowing what to look for
To celebrate the success of pirates and defeat of MAFIAA, people on torrentfreak raise you guns and give a one gun salute.
Long live free speech and free info.
I don’t understand whats the point in “streaming”. I say its plain stupid. Why not just download the movie in advance, and play back later from a hard disk array? You don’t have to skip in quality either, and the link speed becomes irrelevant.
Someone mentioned FTP; not thats being quite ignorant. If you are a single source, and need to distribute to, say, 20 locations, using FTP you need to upload 20 copies, and either every one waits a lot (bandwidth/20), or everyone waits in queue. With bittorrent, you only need to upload 1 copy, and by the time this is finished, all 20 will have it. That is why Bittorrent is still the most efficient distribution method, as long as many people want the same thing at the same time.
In short, by the time ftp finishes a single copy upload, bittorrent would have unlimited copies completed.
Lately, watching movies in theaters leaves a lot to be desired in the quality department. Besides the usual bad contrast/lenses/focus/subtitles situation, Add to it the ridiculously expensive and outdated (Physical) distribution method they use, not to mention quick wear. Yes its time these dinosaurs adapt or perish. The only reason i would go to a cinema anymore is maybe to share moments with someone, because as far as enjoying movies the themselves, it sucks; plus they even charge more than a DVD per ticket…
yeh right, a billion dollar industry is gonna use sh!tty bittorrent to stream their films. how pathetic you’ve become torrentfreak. As a tech demo article, it’s a very nice read. But then again, you have to add a couple of lines about the big bad wolf mpaa at the very beginning and the end of the article, just to get the fanboys excited. what a farce. grow up you tools.
Well Old Timer, you don’t have to make prints anymore. Distribution to movie theaters is the last part of the chain to go digital. All you have to do is set up a large enough disk array, and receive the data in time for playback. Being digital, there is no wear.
Just have twice or triple the same equipment for redundancy (projectors, disk arrays, playback machines, internet links), and you are gold.
Normally, digital movies are shipped as copies on encrypted harddisks to theatres. That’s cheap, safe and likely even faster than a transfer over the internet. I doubt there’s much of a point in streaming movies to cinemas which play the same movie over and over again.
@65 I understand your frunstration in modernizing the distribution of movies…a lot of people in the billion dollar industry would lose their jobs just like when auto plants modernized and started using robots…the same thing…distribution regardless of if it is through bit-torrent, encrypted hard disks or what not, it will come and the whole printing of movies on 35mm film stock at 20-80k per movie will disapear. Yes getting rid of a couple billion dollars in waste productivity…
Years ago, a projectionist made 75-100k per year most with <grade 10 education because of the danger of carbon arc rods and the skill it requires…when I managed and was the projectionist, all my users were also trained to thread the movies and start and focus them…most took about a week of training…industries change, now there are very few dedicated projectionists in the theatres as that job has been deemed redundant…just like the distribution channel of movies will become redundant.
We are not specifically talking about streaming (even though the artical says they did it) we are talking about distribution through bit-torrent, even if it is encrpted to distribute digital movies (not just from MPAA) to the theatres…it would allow for independent artist to show their wares without the huge printing cost of film stock.
This CAM sucks. I’ll wait for a TS or R5. (Please please please, R5!!!)
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