BitTorrent Beefs Up Network Capabilities

1sockchuck writes "BitTorrent Inc. is boosting its network capacity as it prepares to become a centralized hub for legal video content. In May, BitTorrent announced a deal with Warner Brothers to distribute its TV and movie content via the BT platform. It has now lined up IP transit for streaming videos at one gigabit per second."

Comments

Now who will I choose...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

Its hard, to go with the legal BT or the illegal T, somehow like iTunes success we will see the studios wise up and fight the legality battle on the convenience front. Folks are willing to pay, if convenient and easy. Torrents are super fast if you have pipe, and pipe is what BT is going to offer. I'm for one lining up to purchase pay per view streaming with BT when it comes, until then, NetFlix has my butt in a sling.

Re:Now who will I choose...

[Fjornir]

First Post on Slashdot is a badge of honor among neophytes in their larval stage. Most of them grow out of it... Unfortunately Slashdot seems to attract Larva faster than they grow up.

pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[mr_stinky_britches]

With video that will get chewed through rather quickly. Let's see, even at a low average bitrate of 2mbps, that would only be able to stream to 500 people simultaneously (then w/ the added capacity bittorrent gives, you will get a little more capacity, but even 500 people uploading at 20KB/s only gives you roughly 1/10th extra capacity. Punish me and mod me down, but I really must inquire.. When did a company signing up for a gigabit line become slashdot worthy? :/

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, even at a low average bitrate of 2mbps, that would only be able to stream to 500 people simultaneously (then w/ the added capacity bittorrent gives, you will get a little more capacity, but even 500 people uploading at 20KB/s only gives you roughly 1/10th extra capacity.

Do you know how bittorrent works? The maximum theoretical download speed is the seed speed, regardless of the number of downloaders. With 1 Gbit/s, you can stream 500 different torrents at 2mbps to a any number of people (neglecting tracker bandwidth, as it were). That's assuming that they're all uploading at the same speed that they're downloading.

If they're uploading significantly slower than they're downloading, yes, the swarm speed will go down. However any intelligent seed will cut your download speed correspondingly. That's how bittorrent works.

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[SlashChick]

Uh... because a T1 is 1.5Mbit both directions. Your 4Mbit line may be 4Mbit download, but its upload speed is likely... what, 256K? 384K? If you need to serve anything heavier than DNS, you'll want a faster upload speed than that. Hence the need for T1s and larger symmetrical UPLOAD pipes.

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[timeOday]

With video that will get chewed through rather quickly.

I think you are missing the point. Getting bandwidth is the easy part, bandwidth is cheap. In contrast, getting major studios to legally distribute content over bittorrent is a minor miracle. Now the door is open.

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[Mika_Lindman]

If they're uploading significantly slower than they're downloading, yes, the swarm speed will go down. However any intelligent seed will cut your download speed correspondingly. That's how bittorrent works.

Most people have less bandwidth for uploading than downloading. So yes, the swarm speed will go down.

And if I pay $ for my movie, I won't seed it full speed for 2 weeks after downloading, which I may do in case of my favourite linux distro torrents.

Bittorrent -- distro paid for by consumers

[Zzesers92]

Am I the only one who feels like the fool when I'm PAYING twice for content? Once to download, and a second time to upload that same data to the next fool?

I'm not an "info should be free" wacko by any means. But I'm also not going to sacrifice my precious bandwidth to make WB money. If you want to charge me for content, you pay for the fat pipes so that the consumer (us all) are satisfied.

Re:Bittorrent -- distro paid for by consumers

[x2A]

No, you're paying once, but in two different ways; two different currencies.

If you don't wanna contribute to the upload, you gotta pay them more because they need a bigger out pipe.

Re:Bittorrent -- distro paid for by consumers

[Firehed]

Probably true, but what about the people that do saturate their bandwidth (like myself)? Is WB going to force seeding to 100%, charge you extra or ban you from further downloads if you don't?

The endproduct of this will be more expensive or flaky internet connections. If the oversold bandwidth that was chugging along happily suddenly fills up, everyone connected is screwed. Until the ISP upgrades their stuff accordingly (which could well mean laying new/more fiber), everyone has a crappy connection. Someone's gotta pay for the upgrades, and you can bet that those costs are going to make it to the consumers, and most likely fairly quickly. Either by changing their pricing structure, molesting upload bandwidth into nothingness, or starting a per-bit charge. Or leading up to tiered connections.

However it happens, you pay twice.

Re:Bittorrent -- distro paid for by consumers

[timeOday]

Effectively, bittorrent uses twice the bandwidth of a simple HTTP link to a server on the backbone. Partially due to protocol overhead, although that is not the real issue. The real issue is that P2P traffic traverses the "last mile" of network connectivity twice, and that last mile (to your home) is the bottleneck of the Internet. Doubling the load on your bottleneck is not a smart thing to do for the overall Internet. It does happen to pay off at the moment, simply because servers pay per byte and home connections pay per month. Eventually the bandwidth market might re-align to the technical reality, but then again maybe not.

Besides that, bittorrent is bad for media distribution because you can't stream. Let's say you have a 2 mbit/s link to your home and want to watch a two-hour movie which happens to be encoded at 2 mbit/s. If the movie were sent from a server at a steady rate, you could start watching immediately. With bittorrent, you'd have to wait two hours.

Finally, I just don't see the point. They're going to be charging several dollars for each video download, yet the server bandwidth for that download is only worth about a nickle. It just doesn't avoid that much expense. As a customer, I'd rather pay the extra 0.5% to download from a server and start watching immediately, and keep my uplink for my own purposes.

What I want to know is

[Dowda]

will this get me porn any faster?

Duke City Shootout

[GMFTatsujin]

It's not just the big studios. Smaller non-profit festivals are reaping huge exposure and benefits from allying with BitTorrent.

Every year for the past seven years, there's a film making festival called the Duke City Shootout in Albuquerque NM. The idea is that writers from all over the country submit a 10-12 page script, seven of the best get picked out, and the Shootout brings them to Albuquerque to help the writers film their scripts.

No, not pro writers. Guys like you and me. (Well, depending on who you are, it might just be me.)

Respected professionals in the film world (read: Morgan Freeman) are heavily involved behind the scenes, and some of them mentor the crews on the set. One week of madness later, you've got yourself seven brand new indie success stories and a whole lot of exhausted, happy people.

The Duke City Shootout is super cool, and a great place to get your hands on new and interesting video gear. It's literally top of the line digital tech. Apple, BitTorrent, Intel, and a host of other companies are footing the bill so that they can show what can be done by dedicated, creative amateurs with a little guidance and the right toys.

BitTorrent is one of the sponsors this year. They're going to distribute the winning films for free, and they've even got a backload of winners from years past. Admittedly it's not like downloading a complete cinematic experience -- the Duke City Shootout download will, for example, finish the day you start it.

Check it out for yourself: Duke City Shootout home site, and the BitTorrent host for the last year's winners.
</shill>

Re:Upsides to BitTorrent as a distro meth.

[TheDugong]

"which results in less overall cost, which results in savings passed to the consumer."

I'll believe it when I see it.

New releases are AU$7 at my local video shop 2 mins walk away open 10am to 10pm 7 days. We watch most films we want to watch at the cinema anyway.

Better be very cheap, if they want me to help with distribution!

Re:1GB/Sec

[jonnythan]

Huh. A typical DVD is 9MB/s.

A typical HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movie is going to be 15-30MB/s.

I'm not sure what kind of 1.7MB/s movie I'd be paying for.

Re:Streaming?

[Don Negro]

They're not selling streaming video, they're selling downloads to own.

There are some nifty things you can do for BitTorrent-assisted streaming, but that's not what they're up to right now.