Slashdot Mirror
P2P Television?
An Anonymous reader submits a link to this "very interesting article on TVP2P," writing: "While the author doesn't really mention "P2P," think of the permutations of having TV's becoming Napster-like file servers. The tech can't be too hard to work out, since CATV systems are now piping Net access into millions of homes (anyone doing this hack yet?). If you thought the RIAA raised hell, wait until the MPAA and the relevant TV lobby groups figure this out. Of course, if history teaches us anything, they won't figure it out until way after the genie is out of the bottle ..."
It's called usenet. In the alt.binaries hierachy, many popular shows are already being distributed in this manner(albeit without consent of the respective programs' creators or distributors). While I'm not able to get a program produced by my local public television affiliate or from the local university channel unless I capture it myself, quite a number of programs are available-- some even before they are on your local affiliates. I remember how cool it was to be able to watch Fox's '24' in widescreen, since the local affiliate doesn't have hdtv yet. (For that matter, neither do I).
You're only as smart as your brain.
Wasn't there some company that was rebroadcasting US TV over the internet in Canada a few years ago? I don't recall the details, but I remember them being sued. I'd guess that was the end of them, or I'd probably be able to remember the name.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Go to www.planetreplay.com and follow the link on the left to "SwapDV." The SwapDV program is almost exactly what you are talknig about. It emulates a replaytv 4000, so if you have a replaytv on your network, you can play mpeg2 encoded shows streamed directly from your computer's hard disk. It also is able to download shows from your replaytv to your hard disk. And, this is where the P2P part comes in, it is a gnutella client. So it is trivial to share all of your shows with everyone else out on gnutella.
Now, if only regular people had the bandwidth to share these shows - mpeg2 just isn't compressed enough, you are looking at around 400MB+ for a half-hour show.