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Peer-to-Peer Internet Television
Lanaki writes "A non-profit based in Austin, TX is merging the free software and Copyleft communities through a new internet TV station: ACTLab TV. They are streaming Creative Commons, Copyleft, public domain content, and original videos using Alluvium software and their own media player. It's all open source, encouraging others to make their own audio and video streams. Their website was released this week and the player and demo stream will go public next week."
I'd expect to see The Screen Savers switch to this format, instead of a podcast.
sounds like a winner if they don't make it too mushed up.. but how are they going to make money to keep it alive.??
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Note the launch of Vobbo (live video blogs) as an example.
Bandwidth is cheap. Disk space is cheap. Video is going to be very big, very soon.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
Wow, it's like public-access cable TV, only world-wide. Whoopee.
Have you read my blog lately?
Wayne's World! Party time! Excellent!
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Why do they feel the need to surround their text with agressivly flashing graphics?
I couldn't get past the first paragraph before I'd had enough of this. Call me back when they offer a non-stroboscopic version of their content.
You can't take the sky from me...
I was wondering when someone was going to try and organize Creative Commons stuff into a central TV station that people can go to.
/. announcement. If there is no media or software to download yet they might not be slashdotted.
The name isn't very good. ACTLab doesn't feel like a name for a place to go for media... but that's ok.
Good timing on the
This reminds me of the dinky little community station we have around here that use and abuse public domain TV shows as much as they can. Except this one is digital. There is a lot of great content out there, as long as the people who made it don't want much money for it.
The main problem here is the competition. There are a lot of other p2p places that don't charge a cent. They just happen to be illegal though.
Sounds like a great way to broadcast these fellows
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
guys start streaming copyrighted stuff via P2P streams? This technology may be shot down by the *.AAs as evil, because it could be used for piracy.
I would love to see a player built on a Bit-Torrent type solution, but unfortunatly, Bit Torrnet has some limitations for on-demand streaming.
BT doesn't have a "click/watch" type solution. BT is only good for asynchronous delivery of content due to it's download nature. That said, if a future version of BT provided for buffer-demanded priority queing, this would solve the problem. That is my "player" plugged into BT, would know that the next 30 seconds of content is Very high priority, the following 30 seconds is high priority, the next 30 seconds is low priority and the following 30 seconds is very low priority. This could evolve from an MPLS style label switching paradigm of some sort (in model only, not saying to use actual MPLS, rather some of the MPLS best Practices combined with BT).
Just some thoughts.
-Adam
Some friends of mine had a very long-running and fairly successful cable access show entitled, "Fusion Patrol," in Phoenix, that ran weekly for many seasons, and actually had a fairly decent following. They made fun of science fiction and mainstream TV shows and the personalities behind those shows, with a little of other stuff along with. They got cancelled when they made an episode parodying awards shows with, "The Limp Cable Awards", which got them banned by COX Cable due to the political incorrectness of the skit "Jerry's Kids Can Cook Too"... Ah, good times...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Broadcast Machine is a similar thing (which I'm sure has been mentioned on Slashdot before), but it's not live. I'm not really sure what the benefit of the live broadcast model is when the Internet can better support a video-on-demand model.
Expect to see a lot of college porn. I can see a new industry, P2P UT Pr0n
Life is not for the lazy.
How long until the rest of you non-austiners get to watch some OBT productions? (Anyone familure with Austin's public access should have atleast seen some of his shows. Ol' Bitty was the most longing ran one that I remember, Currently doing Clown Time.
Of course, the reason his shows are so good is they're uncensored un-prescreened call in with the random locals that are up at 1am. This will kind of take that community feel away.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I wonder what would happen if they managed to incorporate subscription fees or other pay models into the software?
I'm thinking such a move would generate a humongous business opportunity for all involved.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Snif, I still miss Slashdot Radio. But now, thanks to this technology we can get Slashdot video. We will be able to see Cowboyneal and CmdrTaco getting it on in one great geek lovefest on geek subjects.
But really, Slashdot Radio was one of those "programs" a group of people worldwide listened too, just because it was there and it appealed to them. This kind of technology makes this possible for others as well. Sure you might not be interested in the Dutch Open Student competition rock climbing, but a couple of hundred people might. Peer to peer makes it possible to distribute footage without reducing your upstream to one bit/second/customer.
BTW BBC makes use of Kontiki for their peer to peer distribution of their TV programs and I can see other public TV starting that as well. There is no other way you can easily let 1 million people download the 8 o'clock news beteween 20:10 and 00:10 without jamming your internet connection.
Peer to peer is the holy grail of networking.
Use Adsense for Charity
The reason most "major" cinema houses don't play more independent films is because more sheep^H^H^H people are interested in seeing the lastest Vin Deisel film or other movie that had such a large advertising budget that you can't escape. Movie theaters want to make money, so they play films that they think will make them the most money. Indies only get played when there's a lull (few major releases come out during the autumn) and they can be gotten for extremely cheap, otherwise, you've got the local multiplex still devoting half their screens to Star Wars a month after release.
I think this has incredible potential, if people get behind it. There is already a huge underground of short films. Unless you subscribe to the Sundance Channel or are a regular to websites like i-film you will very likely never see any of this. BMW films, Google video, ACTLab. The movement is fractured, but it is there. Think of it more like the state of OSS a decade ago
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sub 384kbps upstream BW on USA 'broadband' service is blocking a huge opportunity for small scale P2P broadcasting. Heck, BW is so tight that decent quality stereo audio via distributed distribution is impractical nigh impossible...
of course you won't be seeing any upstream broadband, even though it's technically possible and as cheap to add to docsis 2 systems as additional downstream. why? because it foils the 'we are in control of broadcasting' mindset of the providers.
what we need is some rules similar to early telephone de-reg that allow 3rd parties to tilize cable channels just like they use telephone infrastructure.
fat chance.
I read through this a bit and got to think that I was surprised that ABC, CBS, and NBC haven't already tried to do this (since they get their revenue from advertising, this would expand their advertising base)... so I decided to look to see if they had even planned to do it. I didn't find anything on plans for them to offer web broadcasts, however I did find this...
http://mediahopper.com/portal.htm
An information hub for international live and pre-recorded web broadcasts.... apparantely this is not such a new concept (and the few I checked out seemed to only require the Windows Media Player, though I'm sure some use Real Player)
Cheers!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
An actual license text is appreciated.
Anyone has the torrent ?
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Please forgive the poster, he's not in a good mood.
Swarmstreaming, I believe kids are calling it these days..:-P
These guys claim to have such a solution; I was just researching this stuff yesterday out of curiosity. Can't find any reviews or examples of people using it in order to determine if it actually works, though.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Winamp already does this with their Media Library. They have near hundreds of streams from people, it definatly worth a look. I mean, how else can you watch simpsons, futurama, and seinfeld while at work?
Q. Who gets to decide what content gets shown?
The members of the ACTLab TV community sort through submissions and organize them into thematically-related programs. While we won't be able to show everything we're given, we will go through it all and serve you the very best. To learn more about the people who run ACTLab TV stop by our PEOPLE page.
Well, we shall see just how far they support the concept of free speech..
I see people go on all the time about it but they only REALLY support free speech that THEY agree with.
When it comes to content they find disagreeable, all of a sudden the censorship nazis appear from the woodwork..
I like that projects like these are under active development and getting a lot of attention.
I have to ask, though, why require the download of yet *another* media application to use it?
Would it be possible to make a plugin of the protocol for gstreamer, WMP, or any of the already established multimedia players?
To really get traction, these people are going to have to get people to encode video for their special system, get people to install their special system and get their friends to do the same.
However, there are pieces already out there for this sort of thing that people are already using. RSS to track a program for new episodes. Bittorrent to distribute. FFMpeg (and others) for codec/format support.
There is no practical reason to reinvent the wheel as far as these basic components. But there is a very practical reason NOT to do so. These video files are going to seep into other networks. People in this system are going to want to watch content they get from other networks. If we're looking to build a real alternative... a competitive alternative to the way TV works now, we can't have the distribution and viewing infrastructure fragmented. We need there to be a level of standardizatoin so content creators can export to a set of formats that everybody can play. We need a distribution channel that everybody can use. There needs to be a critical mass of regularly updated content people can "tune in" to before people will be motivated do so.
Machine/BlogTorrent are great examples. Different projects that both leverage the same technologies and in so doing, are compatible with the same distribution/discovery network. And you'll notice people are already downloading TV shows (albeit illegally) via BT and playing them on their desktops... so people are even willing to do this "manually" without the aid of a fancypants fron end.
This chain of tools is doing the job very well. There is no practical reason to fragment the distribution channel/audience when the infrastructure is already in place for grassroots TV distro to reach critical mass.
In short... Beta is already deployed, why introduce VHS? It's not about which technology is better. It's about stealing viewers from members of the MPAA. And the tech is already there.
I think that the technical bits that are still to be worked on are making the existing channel more user-friendly to install and operate. If you want to scratch the grassroots TV itch, there's plenty of work to do on the client side and the human interface bits. If you're more of a diplomat than a coder, take a stab at getting people to agree on a common file format for the vids.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
http://www.coolstreaming.org/
I'd be interested to see if "video blogs" could take off.
I'll start by admitting that I don't quite get blogs, even just the text ones. The signal to noise ratio is too low to interest me.
That out of the way, I understand why some people like them: it's an alternative entertainment and news source. People read them at their desks, during work or during "surfing time" at home, when they're not watching TV.
Podcast blogs get time you spend away from your computer: exercising, driving, on the bus, etc. Your ears weren't doing anything anyway, and you can multicast.
But will people spend time watching their blogs? A text blog can read at your own pace and skimmed. A video proceeds at its own place and you can't do too much to alter it. The quality of the content is still the same. But it feels more like TV and less like web surfing, and so I wonder if people will find it more entertaining/informative than TV. TV is pretty damn compelling for most people.
Maybe. Video reporting from the middle of nowhere has the power to be more compelling than the text. "Hey, there's a riot going on!" is less intersting than showing pictures of the riot. But riots are few and far between, mostly. So we'll see what the niche looks like.
Also, a movie isn't automatically better because it's independent. IMO, the only advantage indie films have is they're not focus tested to death so they often aren't so formulaic. The ratio of good to bad movies is about the same for indies and major studio releases. I'd say 90-95% of all movie releases can go straight in the garbage, regardless of what entity actually produced the movie (and I'm someone who loves movies).
1) If you thought The Pacifier was good cinema, then yes, I'll call you a sheep all day long.
2)I have never had a latte in my life, or an esspresso, or a cappaccino. I did drink my first Dunkin Donuts Coolata yesterday. 3)There are only major chain cinemas within a 50 mile radius of where I live. And there are no cinemas at all within a 20 mile radius. I get to see very little independent film outside of what I watch on ifilm. I go to the theater very rarely at all, because I'm not that fond of paying $6 plus gas to watch crap. The last 10 movies I've seen in the theater are SW Ep. 3, Kill Bill Vol 2, Kill Bill Vol 1, Cabin Fever, 28 Days Later, L.I.E., Igby Goes Down, SW Ep 2, Double Jepordy, SW Ep. 1. That should give a good picture of my movie going habits. In that time, the only movies I've downloaded were MiB II and Punch-Drunk Love, both of whitch were downloaded after they left the theater and before they were available on video. I rarely pay to rent DVD's. My local library loans them out for free.
To have an elitist additude, I would have to think I'm better than other people. If I was truely better than other people, my office would have a window. :)
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I know most of you guys don't, but I choose to watch TV in my family room. On my big plasma TV. Where's the set-top-box that can easily find, select, and play this content? I heard they're doing IPTV for porn sites, are those boxes useful for anything else like this? --D
And you don't need some wierd player, either. The Internet Archive offers video in about five different formats, including editable quality versions for use in other works.
What happened to all those crazy Internet radio stations that used to play short films by new directors?
I remember seeing this movie about a mental patient who met a couple of evangelists on the street, and kept winding one of them up by claiming to be the last angel. Eventually one of the evangelists gets mad, decks the guy and then the sky turns black.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Or, for the fundies, pictures of Jeebus cleansing the house of god of gays and lesbians?
4mbit down, 384kbps up... typical Comcast cable modem.
;)
1.5mbit down, 128-384kbps up.. typical SBC DSL line.
*Downloading* a video blog might not be too much of a hassle, but *uploading* one is going to turn a lot of people off from it.
Let's not forget all of the poor saps that are still on dialup.
Hasn`t peercast being doing this for about 3 years so far?
theres alot more interesting content on their Yellow pages too. 200+ channels etc.
For those who doesn't know, a lot of people have been using Cool Streaming to watch some Asian sport channels using the same concept as BT. This might be new in that you can actually broadcast something, but in terms of watching TV using BT engine, that's not something totally new.
www.coolstreaming.org
actually... i just read the other reason for those movies today.
see, some countries sponsor movie making with very loose rules. and it's very easy to find european companies to front the production of the movie, even though the money doesn't stay there or employes many native people.
i didn't understood the legal aspects, but it ends up we in europe are financing 10% of big budget films like tomb raider.
so, i might as well download a few...
They're using University (state) owned equipment, bandwidth, etc.. There are rules about how they can use it. Making money is not allowed, unless they are set up as an "Auxiliary Enterprise" (as with the University's public radio station, KUT). That requires all sorts of funny stuff, like business plans, auditing and picking up the tab for their operation costs (e.g. KUT hosts their site and streams from a private ISP). I wonder if this status has been obtained.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
The reason most "major" cinema houses don't play more independent films is because more sheep^H^H^H people are interested in seeing the lastest Vin Deisel film
No it's not. It's just that the audience for a independent film is small. And a brick-and-mortar cinema cannot afford to show such movies, because they won't earn any money on it.
But, when you have digital, internet-based movie distribution, that in fact means that _any_ audience is a profitable audience. Enter Long Tail economics, and the whole picture changes. People who might have watched latest Vin Diesel bullshit might now opt for something different. An Extreme-BMX video. BBS documentary. Osbscure french movie. Whatever. Movie 'theatres' won't depend on hits to make money anymore.
This is definitely a step in the right direction.