The BBC is one of the parties currently testing the new BitTorrent streaming format, which is part of the P2P-Next project. The scientific director of the project, Johan Pouwelse, told TorrentFreak that it’s not just the BBC interested in this new technology: “We are working with a lot of interested parties. Through the European Broadcasting Union we are getting a lot of feedback. We are expected to do more field trials in the near future.”

If the technology turns out to be a success, broadcasters can save millions of dollars each year on video streaming projects. ISPs on the other hand will be less excited, because they now pay for this bandwidth. Most importantly, however, is that this technology allows individuals to broadcast their streams to thousands of users, without having to invest in lots of bandwidth. YouTube 2.0, sort of.

Pouwelse further told TorrentFreak that, unlike services such as Joost, they are fully committed to open standard and Open Source. “As a research project we, by definition, need to make things that others don’t already have, without needing to worry about business models,” he said, going on to explain how they got live streaming via BitTorrent to work.

“To be relevant we remain BitTorrent compatible,” Pouwelse said. “However, traditional BitTorrent is not compatible with streaming. We solved this problem by dropping the tit-for-tat protocol and making something which is more generic, which we call Give-to-Get.”

“Give-to-Get tries to obtain video blocks just in time for displaying. Tit-for-tat rewards people that give bandwidth to you, which does not work in the streaming case. Instead, Give-to-Get gives bandwidth to people that are nice to others. This is more powerful, but proved to be quite tricky to get working.”

Indeed, streaming a webcam feed is totally different than downloading a huge video file. What the Swarmplayer does is download and buffer one minute’s worth of data, which is then traded with other people in the swarm. The users are actively trading the buffered data.

A key breakthrough was that Dr. Arno Bakker got the “UnDownload()” functionality working. This is needed, because the player has to drop data after a while, since you’re watching a continuous stream. This turned out to require momentous revamping of 7 year old code.”

For those who want to test the BitTorrent live streaming, there is a streaming test where you can tune in to a webcam in Amsterdam, or a 5 minute weather report (not live) from the BBC. You can provide feedback and check out some of the statistics here. More details about how to set up your own BitTorrent live stream are also available.

The Swarmplayer and the BitTorrent live streaming technology are still work in progress. “We hope that we can get this code solid and stable in a month,” Pouwelse said, “then we can focus on the next milestone of sharing ratio enforcement, where we give better video experience to those that upload more.” We will certainly keep an eye on these developments, as it may change the way we watch video online.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

But inefficiency is not the only reason the service is no more, while the vilified Pirate Bay, Mininova et al. are still with us. Stage6 was also a lot more illegal than a BitTorrent tracker — whether it pretended to be complying with the DMCA or not. Surprisingly under reported after the abrupt demise of the service was the 6th Feb US court ruling against DivX’s attempt to establish its protection under the DMCA’s safe harbour provisions ahead of a legal battle with Universal Music Group. My reading of the company’s consequent, speedy exit from the stage (and correct me if you think I’m wrong) is that Stage6 didn’t have the cash or confidence to test its luck any further. (How much this affects DivX as a whole remains to be seen. But only six days after the court decision, Jerome Vashisht Rota, the inventor of DivX and a major shareholder in DivX corporation, was openly dumping stock.)

It’s not hard to read the tea leaves. While GooTube (famously being sued by Viacom on pretty much the same grounds) probably won’t lose sleep, smaller players eating their lunches off of pirate content will be paying very close attention. VCs burning money on pushing streaming media to the masses will at least want to imagine some returns on their investment rather than the further expense of executives in the dock.

So why is the exit of Stage6 a step in the right direction? Because for all the hyperbole in the mainstream (and sometimes online) media about the YouTube or Google Video or Stage6 ‘revolution‘, the relationship to media they offer us is far too traditional. Come to this place. Be served your media (and suck down your advertising along with it). Go away again. Yes, we can upload material, but I’m not the only one who feels that this wasn’t the primary function of Stage6, even if it did distribute about 50,000 copies of STEAL THIS FILM II before its demise. No need to share, no need to understand the technology, no need to think. It’s what they called ‘lean back’ media: millions of people slouching thoughtlessly in front of an marketing-emitting portal.

The promise of P2P is a thorough breakdown of the kind of power that congeals in a portal like Stage6. A user-owned, user-operated infrastructure that doesn’t require massive investment, doesn’t by default allow oligarchs to make more money from us. A disruptive, mutable infrastructure that brings media to us in the context we choose, forcing a massive re-think about what, why and how we create — as individuals, as businesses, as a society.

It is lazy for us to rely at all on portals like Stage6, but worse than lazy, it’s dangerous. It suggests we don’t value the potential autonomy P2P offers us. Our old media masters profited from control of content: are we really so happy to swap them for new ones who profit from control of our eyeballs? However lazy we are, I think that most of us are able to see that that this isn’t a model that we want to encourage. The demise of Stage6 and the portals that will follow gives us cause to think about strengthening our infrastructures: and that can’t be a bad thing.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Here’s a demo of a BitTorrent accelerated demo video that is available worldwide. In order to play the video you need to install BitTorrent DNA and restart your browser. This demo also shows how much bandwidth you share with other peers who are watching the same video. It works like this; the user who wants to watch a stream first has to install the BitTorrent DNA application, which is also bundled with the BitTorrent mainline client. When the user plays a BitTorrent accelerated stream it will not only download data, but also upload it to other people who are watching the same stream, similar to a regular BitTorrent download.

Most ISPs probably wont be happy with peer-to-peer streaming because their customers will use even more bandwidth, but it will be a great cost saver for sites like Youtube. In fact, it is safe to say that it could save them thousands of dollars a day in bandwidth costs. TorrentFreak talked to Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc., and he told us: “It’s safe to say that this product is relevant to all major players in the video space. Any company who is pushing lots of video can benefit from BitTorrent DNA, because it’s very easy to implement, and it delivers dramatic benefits. Whether a company is delivering video, software, or games, BitTorrent DNA can increase the reliability, efficiency, and quality of content delivery. Users notice the benefits immediately when streams are higher quality and are no longer choppy.”

The Watch Now section currently list thousands of clips, some of which are supported by ads. Unfortunately it is only available in the US at the moment, but this will change in the near future. Ashwin told TorrentFreak that this is just a soft launch, international versions will be rolled out as soon as we identify some sponsors to make them available. Another downside is that there are no big movie or TV distributors in the “Watch Now” program just yet, but they are always a bit behind when it comes to technological innovation. However, this does not mean that they start empty, Ashwin told us: “Our partners have published some great content, such as the entire “Ring” series in Japanese, the “Zatoichi” sequels, and hit Bollywood films like “Rang De Basanti”, which have huge fans around the world. We even have some stand-up comedy and special interest automotive videos from GT Channel.”

BitTorrent Inc’s next step will be to move beyond the PC environment into other consumer electronics devices such as moblile phones and DVD-players. The possibilities are endless, as Ashwin notes: “We will soon be announcing more progress with device manufacturers integrating BitTorrent technology into the next-generation of consumer electronics. Between the hardware makers and a new slate of partners deploying BitTorrent DNA, I believe the BitTorrent ecosystem will grow from its current 150 million installed clients to a billion clients installed in the next few years.”

Interesting times, stay tuned!

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It works like this; the user who wants to watch a stream first has to install the BitTorrent DNA application, which is also bundled with the BitTorrent mainline client. When the user plays a BitTorrent accelerated stream it will not only download data, but also upload it to other people who are watching the same stream, similar to a regular BitTorrent download.

Some people have argued that BitTorrent Inc. would use the application (DNA) to let people seed content that they never agreed on downloading, for instance, to speed up the downloads from their entertainment network or sell the bandwidth to others.

However, BitTorrent Inc. CEO Ashwin Navin refutes this rumor and told TorrentFreak: “BitTorrent DNA only accelerates content that a user clicks on. It does not anticipate user wants, or pre-load a user’s PC with content they did not explicitly ask for (via an HTTP request from a webpage). Our terms for DNA require websites to disclose to users why and how DNA improves the experience for video, software, and games with P2P acceleration.”

BitTorrent Inc announced earlier this year that they will launch an ad-supported TV-network this fall. A TV-network powered by BitTorrent’s streaming servoce will have a great advantage compared to competing services, because it saves on resources, and keeps the bandwidth bills relatively low.

ISPs will probably not be happy with P2P streams, because it will increase the bandwidth their consumers are using – so it will cost them more money. The bandwidth war is not over yet.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Technologies like this could save popular streaming websites like YouTube or Google Video a lot of money. It is estimated that YouTube uses 45 terabytes of storage, requiring several million dollars worth of bandwidth a month to stream the content. Peer to peer streaming would significantly decrease the costs for YouTube, because most of the bandwidth would come from peers instead of YouTube’s own servers.

Solid State announced:

Solid State Networks is a developer of high-performance, content-delivery solutions, and the first commercial-class software suite based on the massively scalable BitTorrent protocol. Our flagship product, the Solid State Distributed Delivery Network, is a hybrid content-delivery solution that combines the economic and performance advantages of peer-assisted technology with the reliability of a traditional CDN. It now includes support for on-demand streaming of content.

Although Solid State can implement some of the features of BitTorrent, they have to make some concessions. A key feature of the BitTorrent protocol is that the pieces of the file are not delivered in a “chronological” order, to make it possible to give a high priority to rare pieces. This doesn’t seem to suit streaming.

In August we reported that the “social” BitTorrent client Tribler has plans to integrate YouTube videos in their client. Johan Pouwelse of the Tribler project told TorrentFreak that they are planning to index every one of the +6 million videos posted on YouTube.

A prototype of the YouTube indexing function from Tribler will be ready by the end of this year, and includes an Amazon like recommendation system, and video tagging features.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Download a P2P streaming player from the forum Football Streaming Info, which is stuffed full of links to downloads and tips if you get into technical trouble. TvAnts is a front-runner due to its ease of use — a big plus is that the channel menu is mostly in English, unlike many of the other players which seem to be in Chinese.

Once you have a player installed, a clear and detailed schedule of the day’s games and where to view them can be found at BoxtoBox.

Wired also points their readers to BitTorrent. The World Cup matches are posted on several trackers within a few minutes. No real-time streaming, but very useful if you miss a game.

Over at tvRSS you can find some matches in hr.hdtv, and subscribe to the world cup rss feed.

Update:

In a previous article I pointed to the article in Wired, with some tips and tricks to watch the world cup online. But it seems that quite a lot of people still have problems watching world cup streams online. Don’t worry, there’s another p2p world cup stream player, and it’s easier to use.

People from the UK can use the BBC streams. The rest of the world should try the TVUplayer.

Tune in to the ESPN2 channel for English commentary, and you’re ready to go.

And yes, some people say it’s illegal…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.