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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?"

4 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...
  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. 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?