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Peercasting Ready for Primetime?
ZephyrXero writes "Have you ever wanted to run your own internet radio or TV station, but
thought the bandwidth would cost too much? While Wired
thinks Peer-to-peer broadcasting, or "peercasting", will be the future
of the internet (previously
posted); Peercast.org
says it's already here today. Peercast's software is available for Linux,
Windows, and Mac. You can
broadcast both audio and video without needing a whole lot of bandwidth
since each audience member also uploads back to the network. The Xiph Foundation
is also working on a similar project called "IceShare,"
but it's still in planning. Peercast,
still in beta seems to already be fully functional and ready for an audience (even you dial-up guys)."
One may also want to check out Mercora
-dk
One of my clients is a television network... public television, but a television network nonetheless. He said they've been working within their own group and with a couple of other, larger, non-public networks to deliver television content via web. They see it as competition for the market.
During the day, you've got soaps, kids programming, and infomercials. What if you could simultaneously offer content for everyone else (not that I couldn't spend my days watching Days of Our Lives and Dora the Explorer, but I choose not to)? Or always having educational programs for schools available?
I'd love the ability to pull up my favorite show (which I missed because I was [on the road|working|watching something else|whatever]) at anytime. Without needing a PVR and without worrying about some broadcast flag...
I've discovered Peercast almost two years ago, it's nothing new at all. It's very buggy at the moment but when it works, you have access to a lot of good radios (sometimes real radios are streamed) which are different from the usual american music you can hear on Shoutcast (not that I dislike US music, but you won't listen to a real japanese radio on Shoutcast).
Of course, the choice is very limited, but it will grow up I'm sure of it!
Y'know, they're pretty picky about net broadcast fees. Exactly how are they going to bill people? And exactly who will be billed?
I'm all for this, don't get me wrong. But like any good idea that promotes the *AA's products, moron music execs will be all over it since it bypasses one of their revenue models.
Enjoy it for now, because it's probably going away soon.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
ASCAP will be knocking on your door. Shortly after I graduated from College I was running a little radio station on the Internet. It was a 28Kbps RealAudio stream and I had maybe 4 listeners at my peak. None the less, AASCAP sent me a letter demanding that I cease broadcasting, or license my broadcast through them.
For a non-profit station they had a flat rate of something like $250/year. I suppose that's not that terrible, but since I wasn't making any money at all on the venture ~$20/month seemed a little steep to me. If you have any sort of revenue, they will charge you more based on your revenue.
If you want to do audio casting, I'd recommend Live365 instead. Because they volume license, the rates that you ultimately pay to ASCAP are lower than you'd end up paying on your own. One argument for using them, bandwidth considerations, seems to be fading, but it's definitely worth it just to avoid the legal hassle if your a hobbyist.
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This is legal in the US, but you have to pay license fees per song and per listener, unless you play stuff that's not covered by ASCAP or BMI or SoundExchange. There are also restrictions on what songs you can play, and when you can announce them. This goes for mirrors of on-the-ar broadcasts as well.
-mkb
There's plenty of entertainment produced this way.
It's not from Hollywood, so you won't see it on Entertainment Tonight or the E! Channel, and it won't be picked up by your local Fox affiliate, but it's out there on the 'net.
Every year thousands of film students graduate, and they create plenty of good indy films, full length and shorts. They're generally mocked by the public at large as artsy-fartsy nonsense, but there are plenty of good ones.
The Blair Witch project is a good example of a student project that made it in the "real world".
South Park is another good example. Years before the show, there was the "Spirit of Christmas" short. For every show that lives on or gets picked up like South Park, there thousands that dont.
Then there's internet-only stuff like Homestar Runner, and millions of other flash based toons.
There's a ton of "free" entertainment online, you have to find it yourself, since there's no billion dollar marketing engine behind it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
As I understand it, BitTorrent (and by extension, IceCase which is layered on top of BitTorrent) solves this problem at the peer level using a tit-for-tat algorithm: people who aren't uploading packets don't get many download packets either. This seems like a much more robust solution than "blessed binaries" (which will be hacked anyway, and prevent people from developing their own clients)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Schlock mercenary
Sluggy Freelance
Megatokyo
PvP online
8-bit theater
Red vs. Blue
A lot of content is produced that way. Some of it even good one. Just beacause it's not video doesn't mean it doesn't count.
And let's face it, most of us would rather read a comic with a pile of crap fighting psycho-bears than see some bald guy parading in front of a camerafor half an hour, no matter what he actually did.
Peercast only allows you to watch what is being shown on any given channel as it is broadcast, much like regular broadcast TV.
The content shown is dictated by the operator of that channel.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Perhaps there's something in here that can help.
http://www.peercast.org/code/
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze