Roll Your Own Television Network Using Bittorrent

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?"

Comments

um they already are doing it

[crabpeople]

'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.

P2P Radio already does it

[ganhawk]

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.