Azureus' HD Videos Attempt To Trump YouTube

tedgyz writes "Wired has an article describing a high definition video service from Azureus. It looks like many of the highlights of our previous discussion about service commercialization are panning out. The new Zudeo site, made by the masterminds behind the bittorrent service, aims to be a platform for movie-makers and professionals. Will distancing itself from the homespun efforts of YouTube prove successful, or lead to the service being ignored?" From the article: "With high-definition video cameras available for less than $1,000, and with the rapid adoption HDTVs in the home, it's clear that high-definition entertainment has a future. But the visual clarity of internet video tends to be less than stellar, mostly because the bandwidth costs associated with serving large, high-quality video files is prohibitively expensive. However, the BitTorrent protocol enables content distributors like Azureus to share large files using much less bandwidth."

Comments

Am I the only one...

[balsy2001]

...that doesn't care about HD video or HDTV. I am too cheap to pay for cable and my DVDs look just fine on my TV. I can tell a difference but for me it isn't worth paying anything to switch. As for posting HD videos of myself on the internet, please, no one wants to see me in low res let alone HD.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN -- PARENT IS A TROLL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends how you look at it. I use Azureus (of course to download LEGAL stuff, of course) and have no problems whatsoever with it.
It's crappy in a way of programming language (Java) but except of it it's really nice and configurable.
And all memory holes of the past have been gone for a long time...

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[dsginter]

Such a beautiful idea, but with such a high chance of failure. :(

Here's a suggestion as to the solution to their problems:

Bars.

That's right - as in "establishments that serve alcoholic beverages". All of 'em have these huge screen, high-def monitors all over the place to show sporting events. What do they use 'em for when there are no sporting events? Nothing, largely. Just filler (stick it on ESPN News or CNN and go).

These places have *paying* customers that would rather watch stupid teenagers smashing cans of WD40 with a sledgehammer. You could even install a little controller at each table so that the viewership could vote on the videos (make it simple like "thumbs up", "thumbs down" and "replay" - enough people voting for replay would cause the video to run again).

Install a kiosk for people to download the videos to mobile phones in exchange for the purchase of [INSERT FOOD OR BEVERAGE PRODUCT HERE]. A portion of the money goes back to feed the victims in said videos.

The possibilities are endless.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[Aladrin]

1) The company will. The other seeders are just to reduce load, if they exist.

2) Yeah, major problem.

3) Average user doesn't know jack about bandwidth and won't care.

4) Yeah, this is bad.

5) Not true. There are BT clients that prioritize the beginning of the file and tend to download it first. It could be used to stream, just not as nicely as normal streaming.

It's a BT tracker.

[Kadin2048]

What they're doing really isn't all that cool. They're basically running a BT tracker, but rather than loading it up with all the content that people actually want -- and which also happens to be illegal to distribute -- they're going to only put stuff they have the rights to distribute on it. This tracker will have a fancy web interface, but really it's no different than ThePirateBay, from a technical aspect.

So here's the "underpants gnomes" breakdown of their business plan, as I see it:

1) Release buzzword-laden ("social!" "video!" "peer-to-peer!") press release; attract investors and capital.
2) Use capital to broker deals with content providers to allow you to use some of their stuff.
3) Start bittorrent tracker with fancy web interface, using content from 2.
4) Hope that users will upload videos of themselves doing dumb things, thus creating more content than you can afford to license.
5) ???
6) Profit.

Somewhere between 3 and 4, they also create a new version of their established product, which attempts to turn it from a lowly bittorrent client into a steaming pile of featuritis, in order to make it more 'iTunesy.'

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[R2.0]

IIRC, one can prioritize the first segment of a file in Azeurus for specifically that reason - viewing the first part of a movie file. It would seem like a trivial excercise to enable this by default along with a a little viewer for previewing.

Re:P2P Streaming?

[Anonymous Coward]

All false. P2P streaming *is* possible. Split the d/l into blocks. Download blocks in sequence. When you download block #n you seed the n-1 previous ones. It's not impossible, just hasn't been implemented yet.

If done right it will succeed.

[MikeFM]

As someone that has been experimenting with a commercial venture based on bit torrent I can say that seeding isn't an issue because YOU seed the feeds. I have a server files are uploaded to that stores the files on another server which seeds to only other of my servers and essentially seeds the file all the time. My other seeding servers seed on demand by simply running a BT client that can take orders from the server so that when someone requests a download one of the seeds will grab a copy of the file and make it available to any users out there. Using a Java-applet based client users are running BT pretty much all the time when they are connected to my website so once they've downloaded the file they contribute to others downloading the file, taking a lot of bandwidth load off my servers, without even thinking about it. My client will track files even if users move them around so unless they modify or delete them they'll still be seeding those files.

BT can be ran over an http port, in part, so it's unlikely that users would be completely unable to use the service at work - it might just take off some features that make it faster for them. Besides, as more and more legitimate uses are made for BT I think we'll see less blocking.

BT clients often can detect bandwidth over use and throttle down so that users can use their connection normally. It's not a perfect solution but it works pretty well.

Zudeo doesn't have to use another program. They're crazy if they don't bundle in at least a lite version that works as a Java applet. You have to use a signed applet but it's not a big deal - most users okay it to run without a second thought.

BT can certainly stream files. You just need to tweak it to prefer it to do so. If you can provide your own seeds that can guarentee a minimum speed and availability then it's not a huge problem to stream. Besides, I hate streaming. I can't stand using YouTube because I have to watch 5 seconds, wait, watch another 5 seconds, wait, etc. Just download the whole damn file or at least a sizable chunk and then stream. I regually get 100+ kB/s on individual files I download with BT. I don't get that from YouTube.

The biggest reason YouTube has succeeded is that they make it easy to play any file. You don't have to figure out what codec it needs, what player will work best, etc. That is the area Zudeo needs to make sure they kick YouTube's ass in if they want to succeed.