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Roll Your Own Television Network Using Bittorrent

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the or-at-least-think-about-doing-so dept.

Cryofan writes "Mark Pesce, lecturer at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) writes here and here about using p2p networks, specifically bittorrent, to create a grassroots television network. He cites as an example the BBC's "Flexible TV" internet broadcasting model using that as the core of a "new sort of television network, one which could harness the power of P2P distribution to create a global television network." Producers of video entertainment and news would provide a single copy of a program into the network of P2P clients, and the p2p network peers distribute the content themselves. Thus, a virtual 'newswiki' where the content is distributed bittorrent using some sort of 'trusted peer' or moderator mechanisms as a filtering/evaluation mechanism. So what is stopping anyone from doing this now? Awareness of the concept, perhaps? Lack of broadband connections? Lack of business models for content producers?"

8 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Where I live by suckmysav · · Score: 4, Informative

    many people have to pay for their broadband bits, so it costs quite a lot to leech stuff off bittorrent

    --
    "You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
  2. um they already are doing it by crabpeople · · Score: 5, Informative

    'Thus, a virtual 'newswiki' where the content is distributed bittorrent using some sort of 'trusted peer' or moderator mechanisms as a filtering/evaluation mechanism. So what is stopping anyone from doing this now? Awareness of the concept, perhaps? Lack of broadband connections? Lack of business models for content producers?"'

    isn't this EXACTLY what suprnova is doing?

    sure its mostly an illigal "network" but it still substitutes for TV and pushes a hell of a lot of content across it.

    --
    I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
    1. Re:um they already are doing it by HybridJeff · · Score: 2, Informative
      check the number of people streaming/leeching?

      at the end of the show post a link to a forum youve set up so people can comment on it?

      doesnt seem to hard too me

  3. P2P Radio already does it by ganhawk · · Score: 5, Informative

    Using bittorrent to distribute movie files is cool. But it is not exactly network broadcasting.

    P2P Radio is the way to go. It can stream audio and video using peers. There are some p2p radio stations out there and TV stations are not far behind.

    --
    Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
  4. Re:upstream quota by crabpeople · · Score: 2, Informative

    most telephone providers (at least in canada) dont care AT ALL about bandwidth caps. they just use it as an excuse for busting other things not covered in their EULA or contract...

    its the little guys that care the most about it, and cable companies, id assume because the badwidth is shared between users of a segment as apposed to dsl.

    i was actually told by a guy who worked at dsl.ca that they only had that cap in there as a catch all to kill peoples accounts that they didnt like. i regularaly download ~50gb /month and upload about the same amount without a peep from sympatico or telus.

    i've heard rogers on the other hand, sends alot of thretening letters.

    --
    I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
  5. Re:No No fundage necessary by cranos · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes but when we are talking about internet broadcasting every bit bites into your wallet.

    Here in australia we don't have access to cable the same way you do in the states. As far as I am aware there is no legislation saying our local cable companies have to provide public access

  6. Freenet already has this, more or less. by Myself · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of course, the Freenet routing protocol is a bit iffy right now, but when it works, it's pretty cool.

    The idea of streaming across Freenet's infrastructure has been done before. Who needs a grassroots TV network when you can have a grassroots, anonymous, encrypted TV network?

    The other side-effect of Freenet's architecture is that popular data persists. You might be able to retrieve a show from days or weeks ago, if enough nodes watched it in the first place.

    For the moment, performance limits it to audio streams, but video might be workable in the near future. The dev team can always use more bright minds. Are you free?

  7. Re:Waiting too long for a show by trawg · · Score: 2, Informative

    As far as I know, you can't stream via BitTorrent period - it doesn't download the content sequentially (ie, from the first byte to the last) - it downloads the least available chunks on the network first. So you'd have to make pretty major changes to the BitTorrent client to get it to work, which of course would completely defeat how BT works. All your peers would be competiting for the first chunks of data so they could start streaming.

    (Note: I haven't RTFA'd so I don't know how releveant streaming is to the proposal, but I thought I'd point it out in response to parent.)