Wikipedia (and indeed the whole Wikimedia Foundation) just announced that it has started to use BitTorrent to stream its videos. The foundation is using Swarmplayer from P2P-Next to try and cut down on bandwidth costs.

The Wikimedia Foundation is concerned about bandwidth costs, as video becomes more prevalent on their various project sites (like News, and Quotes and the more famous Wikipedia project). In an announcement this week the foundation stated: “Eventually bandwidth costs could saturate the foundation budget or leave less resources for other projects and programs. For this reason it is important to start exploring and experimenting with future content distribution platforms and partnerships.”

The system set up by Wikipedia uses a combination of webseeds and BitTorrent peers to spread the load. High priority pieces (like the start of the video) are pulled via more traditional HTTP sources, while later in the video where the data is of a lower priority it comes via the BitTorrent protocol. The process is described by P2Pnext in the following diagram;

“I think it’s important as a technology and something that needs exploring,” Michael Dale, Kaltura Open Media Developer and Wikimedia admin told TorrentFreak. The 6000-or-so videos on the Wikimedia servers are all set to use the technology, as will any new ones that are added.

Currently, Swarmplayer is only available as a plugin for Firefox (3.x, it doesn’t work well with the version 4 betas). An Internet Explorer plug-in will be available within the next day or two and a Chrome plugin is planned as well, we are assured. Not so good news for the Opera and Safari users though, as there is no plugin currently planned for them. However, people are free to create their own as the code is open source. “We’re just counting on one hardcore Opera user to port it to Opera,” Dr Pouwelse of P2P-Next told TorrentFreak.

“This is another step in strengthening Web TV,” Pouwelse continued. “The long-term goal is to offer more choice, provide higher quality and increased reliability compared to traditional TV technology.”

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The P2P technology inside the box is Open Source software, and allows the user to stream live content via BitTorrent (picture here, via NTV). Broadcasters will be able to stream to thousands of people, using around the same amount of bandwidth they would use to stream to one or two people. Recent tests have shown that it’s possible to offer high quality video via BitTorrent, which might change how on-demand TV is broadcast.

During a tutorial session at the P2P 2008 conference, Mark from Pioneer presented the new device, and said: “By leveraging the next generation of P2P networking technology, Pioneer is taking steps to bring scalable TV broadcasting and vast on-demand media collections into the Living room.”

The device is 4th generation P2P, which means that it doesn’t use central servers to distribute or moderate the content. Pioneer, nevertheless, made it clear that it will only be possible to access legitimate content with their box “Access to a vast range of on-demand content and broadcast TV in High Definition over the Open Internet is becoming more believable with the integration of 4G P2P technologies into consumer devices,” Mark said.

Worth mentioning, is that the box runs on a 266MHz processor with just 128MByte of RAM. By doing so, Pioneer has set a new standard for what a low-cost processor can deliver using BitTorrent. Several European TV broadcasters are watching the project closely, and we expect to see some consumer trials with this new BitTorrent box in the future.

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The Swarmplayer EZTV is experimenting with uses slightly modified torrent files (.tstream), which make it possible to stream video files using the BitTorrent protocol. This new technology allows publishers to offer video steams without having to pay for expensive bandwidth. Theoretically, you can watch all torrent files with the player but it’s recommended to use newer releases, as they often offer a higher swarm speed. Streaming the typical TV show will run to around 100kb/sec, a speed unattainable with their older television torrents due in part to the low peer numbers, as much as the larger piece size used in the pre-stream torrents.

Novaking isn’t too worried about the sequential piece transfer, and loss of the tit-for-tat impacting the speeds of the swarm for those not trying to stream. “The spread will be so wide in the first week,” he tells us, “that it won’t affect it greatly. Of course it’s impossible to tell until it’s fully live and working.” Currently, only their own torrents will be available via .tstream files, but the hope is that should the test prove successful during the next week, to have them for the torrents from their partner sites, such as MVgroup as well.

BitTorrent streaming is the ideal low-cost distribution model for online video. Here at TorrentFreak we have been testing out the Swarmplayer since its very early beta days with Mininova, and it does look to be a very promising development. However, the client does not (yet) have an option to keep a fully saved copy of the file on your system for later re-watching, and it also doesn’t allow you to change the port it uses. But these are minor issues that should be solved easily.

It is interesting to see that this multi-million dollar research project collaborates with torrent sites like Mininova, and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC. Could this be the future of television? It is at least a possibility, and something for major networks to look at, as some already are (the BBC is a member of the group behind P2PNext, for example). EZTV’s Novaking certainly seems to think so. “We are hoping that TV networks start seeing this as a method to provide people with what they want”.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.