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

Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[AKAImBatman]

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.

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

The key issues I see are:

1. Who's going to keep videos seeded? On Youtube, if the video is available, the video is viewable. Not so for Azureus! The video could be only partially intact (no seeders with not enough downloaders) or it could just be gone. The Bittorrent network has already lost several fan films due to this issue. Will Zudeo keep a seed of every video they've ever carried? Will they be able to afford the bandwidth when the viewers start trickling to videos rather than assisting each other with their downloads?

2. Like it or not, Youtube is often used in workplace camaraderie. Many corporate firewalls whitelist business appropriate ports rather than blacklisting P2P clients. Youtube uses regular HTTP, so it works. Azureus uses the Bittorrent protocol which requires more esoteric ports.

3. Will the bandwidth usage be acceptable for the average user? When you view a Youtube video, you use only the bandwidth necessary to download the video. This active form of downloading means that bandwidth usage stops as soon as the video is completely downloaded. With Bittorrent, users will both upload and download while waiting for the video to complete. They also are recommeneded to leave the client open while going about other tasks. Which can have a negative impact on their other Internet activities.

4. Zudeo breaks up your workflow by launching an external program. This not only breaks up the user's workflow, but it also presents a more confusing interface. If the user wants to view the video, he has to open the torrent tab, click on "Files", then double click the correct file. This action is non-obvious to someone who simply wants to view the show. In addition, Azureus may not even launch when the Zudeo link is clicked! Magnet links are intended as a generic P2P descriptor, and are often claimed by programs other than Azureus.

5. Perhaps the most important point of all: Bittorrent cannot stream files. The viewer must wait until the file is completely downloaded. With Youtube, they can simply watch their show with no intermediary steps.

IMHO, the best bet for Zudeo is to reinvent themselves as an iTunes competitor. If they created a frontend program to Azureus that did all the dirty work, they could at least compete in an arena where they're more likely to succeed. Streaming will still be an issue, but consumers may be willing to wait for High Def content.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Azeures have their own "Seeding Servers" which are permanently online,
guaranteeing that the file will always be available.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[Lumpy]

you missed an impoartant part that youtube has and this cant have.

I can click play and decide in a few seconds if the video is garbage,gross,or not interesting and go on to the nest. With this Hd offering I haveto wait until I downloaded the whole damned thing before seeing it's crap or even broken. This has a huge problem inside Bitrottents already. you dont know if the video is even playable until you get a 100% download and try it. Unless they are offering as well as the HD content a LD clip showing you 30 seconds of it (or the whole thing if less than 30 seconds) that can be viewed instantly.

Most people will bail on using a service if after 10 times they view a video and it's bad, or they are not interested in seeing it as it was mis-labelled.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[XorNand]

You make some excellent points, which illustrate why this service shouldn't really be compared to YouTube. It's a lot like comparing email to SMS. Both are very similiar on the surface, but both are also very successful because they serve slightly different purposes. As you pointed out, it's lack of streaming is the reason why it can't directly compete with YouTube. But because YouTube chooses to stream, they can't offer the same high-quality video as Zudeo. I think it's way to soon call this idea dead in the water. I mean, the iPod was just another MP3 player when it came to market. We'll have to see how well the idea is executed first.

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.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[emil10001]

While you do have some good points, I'd like to point out a couple of things from TFA:

In a demonstration last week, the company showed a crisp, clear, DVD-quality clip that began streaming only seconds after the download was started.

Isn't it possible that they've figured a way around the streaming issue by requiring the chunks downloaded to be sequential?

Users can upload video either to the central server or they can share a video among a select group of friends by creating a private "trackerless" torrent.

So, it seems that they use a central server for keeping these things alive.

I do agree with your points about the bandwidth usage outside of the actual download, but I guess that's the price you pay for good quality video.

One other thing that I'd like to ask is what about all the bandwidth throttling by the ISP's of torrents?

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:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[jazman]

> Bittorrent cannot stream files. The viewer must wait until the file is completely downloaded.

Well, to be hon...buffering.
est, I usu...buffering.
ally wait unt...buffering.
il the fi...buffering.
le has comp...buffering.
letely downl...buffering.
oaded before I st...buffering.
art to watc...buffering.
h it anywa...buffering.
y, otherwise it j...buffering.
ust gets frus...buffering.

oh sod this, I'll go and do something else.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[Lumpy]

Ratings can easily be astroturfed and some on youtube currently suffer from that.
If a piece of content is old enough to have real ratings on it then that could be useful but it's still not as fast as clicking play, saying "ewwww!" and going on to the nest one as most internet users do.

The other problem is their "streaming" still does not work. I tried it on 4 of their HD content clips and they do not stream, they download just like a normal torrent with pieces all random every clip would with not play or would only play the first 1-2 seconds before hitting a missing piece until the end of the download.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[3choTh1s]

Most of these can be circumvented or irrelevant.

1. Who's going to keep videos seeded? On Youtube, if the video is available, the video is viewable. Not so for Azureus! The video could be only partially intact (no seeders with not enough downloaders) or it could just be gone. The Bittorrent network has already lost several fan films due to this issue. Will Zudeo keep a seed of every video they've ever carried? Will they be able to afford the bandwidth when the viewers start trickling to videos rather than assisting each other with their downloads?

1. It's true that you need to have a client "out there" with the video that you want to watch in order for this to work. In comes what I like to call super clients. Clients with high bandwidth abilities that auto-download torrents from popular sites and seed within their ability. They don't have to be watched and quickly give availability to the masses.

2. Like it or not, Youtube is often used in workplace camaraderie. Many corporate firewalls whitelist business appropriate ports rather than blacklisting P2P clients. Youtube uses regular HTTP, so it works. Azureus uses the Bittorrent protocol which requires more esoteric ports.

2. Really? you really shouldn't be watching YouTube at work. Not that I don't... =P

3. Will the bandwidth usage be acceptable for the average user? When you view a Youtube video, you use only the bandwidth necessary to download the video. This active form of downloading means that bandwidth usage stops as soon as the video is completely downloaded. With Bittorrent, users will both upload and download while waiting for the video to complete. They also are recommeneded to leave the client open while going about other tasks. Which can have a negative impact on their other Internet activities.

3. That's the exact thing we're trying to do! HD videos require large space and bandwidth requirements. Much more than a single service can ever handle. So we need regular people to help out. Uploading is part of the p2p game and you get faster service out of it. It doesn't have to ruin the rest of the internet experience. Just make sure that the you have enough upload bandwidth to do the rest of the stuff you want to do. I'm sure in the near future Azereus(it's been a while since I used it) will be able to intelligently upload depending on how much you are using the internet.

4. Zudeo breaks up your workflow by launching an external program. This not only breaks up the user's workflow, but it also presents a more confusing interface. If the user wants to view the video, he has to open the torrent tab, click on "Files", then double click the correct file. This action is non-obvious to someone who simply wants to view the show. In addition, Azureus may not even launch when the Zudeo link is clicked! Magnet links are intended as a generic P2P descriptor, and are often claimed by programs other than Azureus.

4. uh yeah. If you had Azereus then you had another window open helping with torrents: Again this is p2p's domain. I haven't used Zudeo so I really don't know about its interface. But interfaces need to be refined over time depending on how the users actually use the program. Just ask Apple(never buy an Apple 1.0 product). Magnet links may be generic but if you have multiple p2p clients then you seriously need to understand that it's up to you to determine which program handles what links. I use eMule, uTorrent and Sharaza, and some can use the same links, but I specifically state that I want eMule to handle ed2k links and shareaza to handle magnet links even though they both can handle both types.

5. Perhaps the most important point of all: Bittorrent cannot stream files. The viewer must wait until the file is completely downloaded. With Youtube, they can simply watch their show with no intermediary steps.

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[lenroc]

you missed an impoartant part that youtube has and this cant have.

No, he didn't. That was point #5, the one that was bold...

Re:Very cool. Very unlikely to succeed.

[strider44]

And, as it says in the article, the videos start a few seconds after it starts streaming.

Who let Phil Collins in the room

[Overzeetop]

Wasn't that a hit way back in the...ohhhhh, Z udeo. Sorry.

P2P Streaming?

[FrostyCoolSlug]

It seems that Azureus intend on using P2P for the file 'Downloads'. One of the advantages that YouTube has currently is that you hit the 'Go' Button and the video streams straight from a persistent data source. As far as P2P goes, availability becomes an important issue, it's all well and good uploading a HD video, but you wont be able to stream it, and will have to wait for it to download and eat your bandwidth whilst you share to others.

I can't see this taking off in the same way that YouTube did, some of us just don't have the bandwidth

Re:P2P Streaming?

[Warin]

Exactly. Most YouTube videos are what... a couple of megabytes? HD Video, even compressed, is going to be a lot larger. To the point where most people are going to hit bandwidth caps fairly quickly, if they are downloading even a few movies

Positioning such a service as YouTube like is a little inane. Now, if they positioned it as a reasonable way to distribut indie films in High Def, they might find people a lot more receptive. I dont know what mastering a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD costs, but for some indie folk, it might just be too much... wheras this will let people get their films out in high quality at a reasonably low (well, free) cost.

mm...like Veoh?

[1001011010110101]

There used to be another service that worked like that, called Veoh. Im not even sure it still exists, I stopped using it when they changed their term of services and forbid the posting of p0rn.

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...

"Paying" twice...?

[Half-pint HAL]

I'm not interested. Why? Because on P2P, as other posters have said, I'm the the webserver. But who does the advertising money go to? Not me.

I get a slower weblink, and a slightly higher electricity bill. My broadband ISP charges me for excessive uploading and demands that I sign up to a commercial package -- and I can't argue, as I'm supplying a commercial service. And I still have to sit through five minutes of ads for every 10 minutes of program.

No thanks.

HAL.

Re:"Paying" twice...?

[Lord Ender]

You are paying more for a better product.

Face it: youtube is right on the verge of being unwatchably-low quality. This would be HD.

In HD

[Beek Dog]

YouTube: Watch boy smash face into ground

Azureus: Watch boy smash face into ground in excruciating detail

HD, ho hum... I'll pass until Smell-o-vision comes around.

Re:YouTube can kill this in an instant...

[LifeWithJustin]

I don't think they could do that. It's not like YouTube has the bandwidth that say a google has... oh... never mind.

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.'

Not the same and other things

[Jeff DeMaagd]

As noted above, flash sends you the first bits of the video, ready to play within seconds if not immediately. Bittorrent files don't work that way, you get whatever bits are sent to you, and not in any particular order either. That also means having to have files on the drive, when I leave YouTube and close the browser, the files are generally gone.

Not only that, just about any digital camera is able to capture video that's better than what YouTube offers, the problem is that YouTube is using a fairly old codec. They can get better video with less bandwidth by switching to OnTo's latest codec.

Re:Not the same and other things

[Inda]

I don't think that's strictly true.

I don't use BitTorrent much these days but when I did, I always got my client to request small files like NFOs, SFVs, JPEGs and AVI samples first.

There's nothing to stop the client asking for the blocks in order.

HD Cameras for less than $1000???

[Temsi]

Where are these guys shopping?

6. Azureus

[mattgreen]

At least in my book. Nothing like needing 300 megabytes of memory to be used just to download files!

(Yes, I realize you can probably use other clients. I'm just being offensive.)

Please seed!

[stile99]

I tried reading the article, but it looks like a lot of us are stuck at 98.3%, will someone please seed?

Re:Bullshit

[shudde]

The download link on Zudeo is http://torrents.aelitis.com:88/files/Azureus_2.5.0 .0_linux.tar.bz2.

I have no idea why they're pushing the site as Azureus 3.0 but that's a legitimate download link, the same one offered on the SourceForge site. Interestingly while Zudeo is handling the press, the sf page has taken a dive.

nyud.net:8080 shows they've got a prominent ad for Zudeo on the mainpage though.

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.

Canon HV10 $999

[westlake]

HD Cameras for less than $1000??? Where are these guys shopping?

The Cannon HV10 is available for $999 from Tiger Direct and other outlets. Described as the world's smallest HD camcorder. 1920x1080 CMOS sensor. 10x optical zoom, image stabilization, etc.

The Sanyo HD1A records 720p MPEG-4 video on SD cards. Sells for around $600-$700. Froogle is your friend.