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

Hmm...

[Mike Rubits]

Between this and the Podcasting article, one thing is to be for sure:

Slashdot is looking to become the next media giant

I, for one, welcome our new Slashdot overlords?

SlashdotTV?

[ackthpt]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SlashdotTV's News, I'm Timothy, your host. If you have moderation points or metamoderation you may use them <ouch> at anytime during the <ouch> netcast. Please use res<ouch>ponsibly. Later we'll broadcast a slashpoll with CowboyNeal somehow worked <ouch> into the final option.<ouch><ouch><ouch>

Oh fsck this, <ouch><ouch><ouch> damn, take <ouch><ouch>these wires off<ouch> damn, what a <ouch><ouch>way to run a <ouch> network!

Re:SlashdotTV?

[Soko]

Sorry about that ladies and gentelmen, the moderators responsible for that have been sacked. Now for the News.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SlashdotTV's News, I'm Timothy^WCmdrTaco, your host. If you have moderation points or metamoderation you may use them <ouch> at anytime during the <ouch> netcast. Please use res<ouch>ponsibly. *Aside* - What do you mean by 'dupe', CowboyNeal? Later we'll broadcast a slashpoll with CowboyNeal somehow worked <ouch> into the final option.<ouch><ouch><ouch><ouch>

Dupe?<ouch><ouc h> What do <ouch>you<ouch> mean dupe? Dammit! <ouch><ouch>Who's fscking idea <ouch>was<ouch><ouch><yeeowch>th is anyway? You <ouch>moderators are going to be sacke<bzzzzzzt>

Content

[sport_160]

I think what is stopping people now is a lack of legal content that they can share. You can bet that nobody wants to watch my home videos.

Well, i did this. RSS + Bittorrent

[thenightisdark]

All someone would need to run a station would be to run an rss feed. Everyone would download .torrents basied on the RSS, then boom, instant 'station'. Hell, i might pay someone to access their RSS feed for this purpose.

upstream quota

[discord5]

How about the average broadband connection having an upstream quota cap. 1.5GB of upstream traffic a month for me, and not a byte more unless I "contribute" a generous amount to my ISP.

This is still one of the major issues for me when it comes to ISPs. If I would download something popular from bittorrent or edonkey, 1.5GB is absolutely nothing. So the only solution would be if I were to firewall incoming connection and be a leech, or put QOS on all traffic going out, limiting it to 0.5K/s.

This all is of course hypothetically speaking... ;)

How do you advertise?

[cranos]

I think one big hurdle to this sort of thing would be how do you cover you're costs.

Producing even a basic news show still costs money, even if all the people running it are volunteers.

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.