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 would be nice if the cable companies got off their asses and let us use the infrastructure to the full potential, with network like Kazaa except everything on demand. I don't think the MPAA would go for it though.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
... searching the P2P networks for pr0n.
#include <sig.h>
Shhh...Don't give them insight to the master plans!
Great - The TV can get P2P worms now.
Errr, no mom it was the worm that downloaded the pr0n, not me
They have already sued over file-sharing TV; specifically, the Replay4500. It's been on Slashdot *several* times already.
Your gloating about how dumb the allegedly-don't-get-technology busineses are would be better placed if you at least demonstrated the ability to use a search box or scan an archive list.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Since most broadband providers will soon be metering access, depending on the costs involved in file sharing, maybe P2P will just be dead.
--tom
Think of all that wasted bandwith transmitting tv signals. Slashdot p2pTV would take out the entire web. .... the slashvision effect?
think of the permutations of
having TV's becoming Napster-like file servers
having TV's becoming Napster-like servers file
having TV's becoming servers Napster-like file
having TV's servers becoming Napster-like file
...
*yawn*
Wow, there is never anything to watch on TV, so now there won't ever be anything to download either.
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.
What you need to do to make VOD work is implememnt it with a network ala Freenet (the P2P Freenet not the other one) this way no one knows exactly what is on their share. Give incentives to people that the more space they give the lower the cost will be for them.
Hmmm maybe I should patent this idea...
Now, how about making my_tv_show.mpg and put it on Gnutella or Freenet?
We who are about to salute you, die.
I have Ultiamte TV at home and I find that I am paying for a service that I use less and less. If I could find music and video that I could play on my TV with a P2P type application for UTV ... Talk about Couch Potato!!! w00t!
"I think you know what I'm talkin' about, Mr. President; We're gonna kill us a mummy!" - Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley
Just what we need -- you think you're d/ling Bambi for the kids, and find out it's Bambi's Banged By Bombay.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Wow, when did about.com start offering URL redirection! (actually not URL redirection, I honestly can't remember the name, but basically about.com is pulling the content and pushign it back to you) Whoho!.
BTW for everyone out there, its a goatse link!
Interesting... If the cable companies are so against TiVO and the similar product lines, how do they feel about this?
It also brings the menu to mind... Right now we have a list of channels to flip through. If you have Digital Cable or Satellite, you have a menu so you can skip to other channels. How will things be done if you have 1,000,000 hours of footage available to watch?
Will it be like Napster or Morpheus or Kazaa? Will you have to be like "Ok content providers, I want the 4th episode of Twilight Zone... any of you have it?"
That's what I want, really... having to rely on them. Imagine if the MPAA and RIAA join up... you "download" it to your TV only to find it was a 30-second looped promo for the new Mariah Caray special...
Plus, the theme of Pay Per View could be expanded dramatically... it's scary.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
I am sure things like this will happen in the future, but when it is the reality for majority of people, are we still "watching TV" or do we call it something totally different?
I believe we are fixated to thinking that TV means receiving a broadcast transmission. Instead in year 2015 we might be watching "something+vision" like "D vision" (and your favorite show will be D vision by zero). Any other suggestions on terms replacing TV in future?
from Merriam-Webster's thesaurus:
Entry Word: television
Text: a medium of communication involving the transmission and reproduction of images by radio waves
At first they will likely assume that bandwidth will limit this sort of thing. However, the relationships between the music and movie industry will ensure that many of the coorperations will act quicker than you think. Yes, the genie caught the music industry unaware, but it was a new genie back then.
In the UK someone got convicted for redistributing radio over the web.
Anything else comes to the courts the judge is giong to look at this case and say wrong.
There is a link here.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
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.
At this rate, I'm surprised the MPAA & RIAA hasn't started to complain about the copyright laws specialized for news, where you can use so and so number of seconds of a copyrighted material for informational purposes.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
... a Beowulf Cluster of Tivos!
"Derp de derp."
...at least not yet for all channels.
I doubt many people are going to be willing to pay thousands, if not millions, per month, so that anyone may see the weather channel in it's pristine glory over the internet - especially when there's much more efficient weather web sites that already exist. Well, that is, unless the weather channel starts hiring supermodels to introduce the weather... with very special forms of weather simulations, etc.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
For the humor impaired: Slashdot's authors dont realize it (and dont disturb them--they're innocent, like little kids..) but the genie is already out of the bottle.
For the stylistically impaired, user submissions are in italics, and slashdot editors' comments are not. Sure, maybe they shouldn't have posted it, but don't put words in their mouths.
S
It's called Gnutella and if they can get the protocol to actually work in RL as well as in theory I'll finally finish downloading the first season of Enterprise and burn it to VCD and be happy.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Now, let's stop to consider that the U.S., every day, produces something on the order of 360 hours (12 hours times 30 channels) of new content I don't get where he makes the connection between channels and airtime, and new content.
It's not quite the same as what the article suggests, but I do think a reasonable P2P 'TV' network (it'd really be a PC network...) is rather plausible.
I have a Pentium 2 400 machine in my bedroom. It has a Hauppage WinTV card ($49, $99 for stereo) and the PicVideo Motion JPEG Codec. It can capture at 640 by 480 @ 30 fps without breaking a sweat. I use it as a VCR. The data rate's pretty high, I usually compress it to DivX later if I want to keep the show. I wouldn't put this stuff out on Kazaa, though, with my 256kbps limit.
However, I live in a pretty big complex that is laid out rather nicely for 802.11. I could see a few people taking really old computers, turning them into virtual VCR's, and making the shows available on 802.11.
One guy could be capturing That 70's Show, while the next guy is capturing Enterprise, all at near-broadcast quality!
The reason I'm mentioning this is that I expect one day there'll be a huge 802.11 network built. (Or something like it...) It'll start with an apartment complex sharing an internet connection. Then they'll share their files. Then they'll connect neighboring complexes.... and so on. There won't be any charge for bandwidth other than electricity.
I have a feeling that the way the internet is going, individuals will build something like this so they can break away from the WWW. Maybe I'm just fantasizing, but who knows? Sharing TV shows, like the article describes, could be the killer app that gets this type of thing launched.
"Derp de derp."
basically about.com is pulling the content and pushign it back to you
That's a proxy, and this About page is no proxy. On my machine, I have goatse.cx and www.goatse.cx assigned in .../etc/hosts to an Apache server on 127.0.0.1 (otherwise known as localhost), which mirrors pineight.com. I didn't see the ass but rather the front page of pineight.com, which means that my computer requested the content.
It's URL redirection in a frame.
Will I retire or break 10K?
In the P2P systems that we have seen, each node makes "their" data available on the system, and when looking for new data, it will search for it on the distributed system. When it is found, it will take it. It's like one big hard drive where everyone has access to data that is put on it.
But, notice that while the writer mentions the big distributed storage network, he never really mentions the free and unfettered access part of it. In fact, there's very definite references to DRM-like constructs where you'll "order" some media, and have it delivered electronically, perhaps with a "key" that gives you limited viewings. In this vision of distributed storage, if the new episode of Buffy is on your neighbor's TiVo, you can snatch it from there and not have to go to the network's servers to get it, maybe saving you from having it count against your monthly broadband access GB limit.. But you still need to buy a Buffy-viewing license before the device will actually let you view it. And licenses for newer content like first-run movies will expire after a while, and won't be perpetual like a DVD you buy right now (supposedly) is.
This is actually Pay-Per-View taken to an extreme, where your TiVo can get any episode of Star Trek you want automatically, but will prevent you from watching it unless you fork over money to Paramount. Is this really the direction where we want things to go?
Ah, but if Congress and the HDTV standards groups get their way, people won't have the VCR for too long...
Sure, they're pretty much the same thing. Bob records a show and offers copies to others.
Practically, it's much different to record a show, drop it onto your machine, and let people make an unlimited number of identical, almost zero-cost copies of it (discounting any forthcoming bandwidth tarrifs) at will. Video tapes and postage aren't free, real-time tape copying takes a long time and is lossy.
All things considered, it's much easier and cheaper to trade via P2P than trade tapes via mail.
"But if you want to watch the new Lord of the Rings next December, you'll need to reserve a copy from Comcast, which will download it to your living-room hard disk the night it's released with a key that lets you watch it a certain number of times."
Meaning I won't control what is being stored on MY system. Yet, they expect me to pay for what they are using to store it with. No, this is not what I would want as a consumer.
Why does it seem that My wallet is the ONLY reason these people want to give me ANYTHING? And why does it seem I am Supposed to sit back and be the Cash Cow for these outdated indutries?
You keep going until you die..."Me".
As long as i can get my sponge bob and Tom & Jerry on vcd, and watch them on my computer, i'll be happy. I'm for fully sharing tv broadcasts. They're all broadcasted, but now, we would get to watch them anytime we want.
The Gutenberg era wherein the word was sacred and could not be profaned is dead, dead, dead, and, information is a commodity destined to become cheaper. The question arises whether some form of Gresham's Law will come into play, and, bad information will drive out the good. But then , the more especially in the context of television, maybe the inverse will hold and good information will drive out the bad. May the Force be With You.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Finally, and end to the era of turning on my TV to see programming. Soon, I will get to see H4X0rz, how to make my penis bigger in just two hours, mislabeled TV shows, and most of all, viruses and bugs of all sorts. I was worried my TV wasn't giving me enough crap with the shows it picks up. Just what I need.
Yes, I agree. Unless bandwidth becomes real big and real cheap real fast, I don't expect p2p TV to go anywhere soon.
However, local networks (including wireless neighborhood mesh networks) are another matter. They can be very cheap to build and run and very fast because the data doesn't have to be shipped across the country. With a wireless mesh, you just have to setup the antenna and power it, and you're in. Thus a neighborhood can easily share shows, allow people to know what they're watching in a neighborly way, and even actively pool resources for efficient storage without breaking the bank. As long as shows are initially autosaved off the regular broadcasts, it won't put too much stress on the on-demand mechanisms.
This would be enough for popular shows, while less popular and more obscure ones could be piped over the internet individually. A smart filesharing network could handle all of this with a little effort, provided the files are compressed and you aren't living in some super-eclectic neighborhood.
Good article though. Interesting data on 360 hours per day/ million total. Unfortunately, it also raises the spectre of pay-per-view-over-pay-per-get.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
So if you want to watch reruns of Gilligan's Island...
I guess necessity is the mother of invention after all. Why there could be thousands of people paying for and downloading Gilligan's Island as we speak! Think of the business oportunities! We could end the dot.com collapse right now!
Gilligan! Put down those coconuts!
I'm a friend of a friend of the working class.
Time to break out those DRM helmets that fog up when you see something you havent paid for.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
I don't think they even know the bottom line. I'd be willing to pay quite a bit to download TV on demand, even if there was a (reasonable) delay in availability after the intial commercial broadcast. After all, I'd be saving money on VCRs, tape, and my time in programming and setting things up. Not to mention the aggravation when I miss a favorite show because something went wrong. If the charges were reasonable and the user interface decent, I probably wouldn't bother seeking bootlegs even if they were readily available.
The technology is here, now, yet the legitimate owners of the material aren't even offering a reasonable alternative to the pirates.
Please note, that Fortune Magazine article is on an AOL/TIME-Warner website. As in CNN, as in Turner Networks, as in Time Warner Cable. They obviously are considering it to some level, and I'm sure a few people in the company will read this article. How much notice they'll take is another thing, whether they'll do anything to try to stop it.... Chances are though they will do so, and as quick as possible. AOL Time Warner is one of the largest TV and entertainment conglomerates out there...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
I think the best place for P2P to go is broadcasting. True broadcasting. I think each router/gateway on the internet should start having built in accomidations for P2P, so when you want to stream video or audio your computer would send out a request and then the router will send out a request (much like it already does,) to the nearest server that is helping stream such and such a a/v channel. With something like that in place in the heart of the net can we achieve virtually seamless streaming data. Of course then there would be problems of assigning ID codes so joe-schmoe won't accidentally override cnn's stream and that could prove to be slightly evil.
Such a method could also be used for file sharing, but I doubt that'd find quicker acceptance. At least with p2p streaming a/v, big broadcasting corperations wouldn't mind too much. TV and radio stations could only benefit from such a system, they can get their ads out to a wider audience cheaper than using a traditional client/server model.
I think the real question is: is the internet ready to become the standard infastructure for all electronic communications? With a good P2P broadcasting scheme and VoIP phones we could have only two cables running into our homes, data and power (unless of course you want data over power.)
Sometimes it's better to simply start over.
--Roy
Now I'm going to try to get the latest TV show and it's going to be slow and then, I open it up and it's something completely different.
Of course, if history teaches us anything, they won't figure it out until way after the genie is out of the bottle ..."
/. for subversive IP violators.
Unless they're monitoring
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
You've raised a good point. Here we are, in a day and age when there are hundreds, if not thousands, of geeks out there who would love to build the next home theater component, whether it's for P2P television or some kind of streaming video box or whatnot, and the folks with the content see this as a threat rather than jumping on it as an enormous business opportunity.
When phonograph records were invented, the music industry was horrified that nobody would attend concerts any longer. When film emerged, theaters saw their own end as folks would no longer attend live performances. And when the video tape player became available to the consumer, cinemas worried that nobody would attend the movie theater.
Am I wrong in assuming that these technologies have actually increased the worth of these businesses? For live music and theater productions, just check out Ticket Master! There are hundreds of performances every single day! As for the movie theater, have you seen the lines at the ticket booths lately? Sure, there might be 10 or 100 or 1000 or even 10000 geeks out there who will pass up the "real" performance for some crappy downloaded version played in a little window on their computer with people's heads in the way, but the rest of the world will continue to support theaters and concerts.
I believe the numbers of live theater productions, live concerts and movies in the theater have increased by several orders of magnitude since the invention of recordable media. If only the dull, boring gray-haired old men in management of the RIAA and MPAA would understand that and use MP3, P2P, and every other "obstacle" to their advantage, rather than try to fight an impossible battle against good technologies, causing the government to pass all kinds of laws reminicient of George Orwell's 1984.
The media companies are supposed to think of innovative ways to move content around BEFORE the pirates do it for them! But once again, the ever-important "bottom line" way of thinking among the idiot management crowd causes them to favor some silly numbers over good, solid technical knowledge and decisions, and that is what screws up their bottom line in the first place! Management thinks they don't need to know or get involved in the details. What those dumb-asses don't understand is that try as you might, those details NEED attention, because they are what compose the overall picture. And they need MANAGEMENT'S ATTENTION, just as much as the attention of the lower-level employees who deal with the details first-hand. And management needs to fully comprehend the depths and importance of these details. If they manage a programming company, they should study programming. They don't need to program, that's the programmers' job. But they need to understand, in order to make better decisions. They can't just say, "Well, why isn't it done?" Or, "You say it'll take a month, but you have two weeks to get it done." Well, excuse me, but if it takes a month, it'll be done in a month, and not a moment sooner. Management needs to understand that. And management of the RIAA, MPAA and all the media companies need to understand that the world changes, businesses rise and fall, and their time has come and gone... or, they will choose to understand that those ever-pesky details of their business need to change, and maybe, MAYBE they'll be able to profit from these changes.
Regardless of what happens in the world, it is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE for companies of ANY type to have laws passed (like DMCA, SSSCA, etc) to protect their alleged right to profits, because they have no such right in any sense of the word. The government provides patents, copyrights and trademarks. With the original limitations, those are quite enough to provide ample protection for any business.
I was sitting around pondering the potential uses of my Playstation 2 linux kit. With all the limitations Sony installed into it, you can't scale it into much more than it already is; a development platform for games. But then it hit me, the Playstion 2 w/ linux would be the perfect P2PTV platform! A standardized hardware interface, almost all with TV's attached, and ethernet connections... all that's needed now is for some clever hacker to whip up some GPL'd software made to interface with the Playstation's API's and viola! Hook it into Gnutella or one of the other new P2P protocols and you'll already have a huge filebase. Hell there's 30 million PS2 units worldwide right now, that's quite a market. The PS2 could even be the new P2P marketing platform. If Sony (or even Gameshark or somebody) could sell an authenticcation service through the PS2 w/ some P2P software, damn i think they'd be in business.
no sig required
This has been on the board for a long time at our company. In fact, from what I understand, ReplayTV already *has* program sharing between STBs. Personally, I'm still not sold on stuffing a Hard drive into a Set-top box especially if its prone to crashes.
So in that light there are a lot of projects going on that are similar to this. Even Microsoft is pretty aware. Their 'Freestyle' project is a solution that's:
1. meant to display on the TV screen (either through STB or computer video-out card) and,
2. networks with the HD on your computer (a la works with 3rd party P2P file sharing).
I'm sure there are some Linux equivalents.
If my memory serves me right, Bill Gates wrote page after page about a system such as this in his book The Road Ahead. He described a Tivo-like interface used to connect to a file server via set-top box to select programming. However, he described it more as a digital broadcast receiver (There were extensive references to programs being aired every 5 minutes allowing one to tune in [almost] as they pleased). When I read that several years ago, I thought it was an interesting idea and would still love to see a variant of the technology implemented today. Of course, I don't feel too inclined to 'activate' my TV or sign up for a Passport to change channels....
Start now, get shit in place so that we can make sure that ICAAN/napster/selling all our credit data/any of our data to anybody won't happen anymore.
I'm sick and fucking tired of hearing how every bit of data about my life can be sold to some fucking company who can then spam me in any way they see fit (snail mail/e-mail/WHATS NEXT???)
So, instead lets get our shit together and get some laws out there that pertain to this so the companies can't get their grubby little hands on any more of our lives. Keep coorporations out of our homes, out of our credit/phone/TV watching data!!! Hell, keep the fucking coorporations out of my head since they are heading there anyways.
Yhcrana
The voices in my head don't like you
This would certainly allow small content producers to have access to every consumer. I like the idea of being able to wacth local programming from wherever on my t.v. and have it accessible at the same rate as huge networks. Wayne and Garth wouldn't of had to sellout to the big networks.
Lots of shows have around found their way into common exchange on peer to peer networks. Not only cartoons such as the simpsons, family guy, southpark, and futurama, but also Shows like Farscape can often be found. Sure it's not everything, but its a good start.
P2P for music is one thing You buy a CD, copy it t your HD, and make it available within Kazaa/Morpheus/Gnutella/whatever. You've bought it,and are (ilegally?) distributing it.
With TV, if JoeBlow wants the latest episode of Buffy, he can freakin record it himself! It's not like there is only one copy.
P2P is NOT a suitable model for everything. PDA's, PC's, cellphones....what's next, P2P basketballs? Morse code to your buddy as you bounce it?
Even better. I bet they left the character of thumper in...
Click here to read too much about my personal life
I've got about 300 video tapes at home. Most stuff taped off TV. Stuff like MTV when they showed videos (yeah...I'm old), some shows from the 80s, Dr Who again and again.
Why does it need to be something that is currently on?
I think it'd be cool to fire up NapTV, search for "greatest american hero with the ghost" episode and let it rip.
Of course, if it is like Napster, it'd probably be the wrong show misnamed and only half of that.
As for the new meaning to Pay-Per-View:
Instead of "I need to upgrade my 28.8 kb connection to a 1.5 MB Fiber-optic T1 LAN. Will you be able to provide an IP router capable of supporting my existing Tolken-Ring Ethernet network?"
Homer: "Can I have my money now?"
Now: "I need to download The Matrix tonight so I can watch it at my LAN party. Will you be able to provide a MPEG2 version of it that is both of optimal quality and small file size (i.e. adjust the bitrate down to 6.0 or so)?"
P2P User: "Can I have my money now?"
Disclaimer: This comment was generated by a Flock of Trained Microsoft Programmers for Aqua_Geek.
I can see why TV companies would want to sue: their customers are getting seen in more markets, yet paying for only the markets that the TV company is broadcasting in.
Have any advertising companies sued or is it only the TV companies?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Flamebait?!? This was funny as hell!
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Yeah, but it takes a friend of mine like 8 hours to get a copy of a program. (unsure if it was a 30 minute or 1 hour show.)
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Ah, I remember "greatest american hero", such great fun - wonder how it would hold up today
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating