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Researchers Test BitTorrent Live Streaming

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the pirating-without-the-pesky-evidence-trail dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TorrentFreak reports that the Swarmplayer, developed by the P2P-Next research group, is now capable of streaming live video in true 4th generation P2P style using a zero-server approach. With a $22 million project budget from the EU and partners, the P2P-Next research group intends to redefine how video is viewed on the Internet. The researchers have launched a streaming experiment where you can tune in to a webcam in Amsterdam, or a 5 minute weather report (not live) from the BBC. More details about how to set up your own BitTorrent live stream are also available."

5 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. I see some issues here... by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not sure how smooth this would be, since BT usually sends packets in the order of availability, not how it streams... And I am not sure if it is a strange algorithm in my client or I am cursed, but the first file in a torrent is always the last to finish for me.

    1. Re:I see some issues here... by Grey+Ninja · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You can set priorities on the files, and your client will request those pieces first. In a streaming situation, I would imagine that everyone's client would be set to prioritize the chunks in order. Which I think would actually probably work really well. Everyone's client would become really bottom heavy as they watched the movie, and download speeds would start out really fast, and gradually taper off. If you had enough clients, I would imagine that it wouldn't be an issue.

      Very interesting concept, and I'm surprised nobody thought of it sooner. It could start a new p2p video service like the world has never seen. Instead of taking 2 hours to download the movie, then watching it, you can watch any movie on pirate bay, right now. The trick is just that everyone needs to be using a streaming client.

    2. Re:I see some issues here... by Grey+Ninja · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I just installed the player and watched the videos. I'm running Linux, so it might work different in Windows (probably not a whole lot different though). When you open up the torrent with their player, it essentially functions like a normal bittorrent client, with a lot of automation. It will buffer for a bit, and then open up VLC (or whatever your default player is?) and start playing the stream. You don't actually see a list of all the torrents you are currently distributing, but it saves them to a cache somewhere, and seeds them even after you are done watching them. It just sits in the system tray and does its thing. Which is probably a necessity for this to work.

  2. Maby a good idea for the future, forget it today by xiando · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My ADSL connection is 2.5Mbit out, 23Mbit in. It was 0.5Mbit/8Mbit until the local telco reciently upgraded some central. I can not send as much out as I take in, nor can most other Internet users. Thus; live video streaming will simply not work as long as the large majority simply can't send as much video out as they require in in order to view the video.

    It really does not matter that it takes longer to download than it takes to view the video when viewing television series from tv-channels like eztv, which is why BitTorrent is so popular.

    This BitTorrent streaming idea is great in theory and it will work great if we upgrade all end-user connections, backbones and so on. The future will be great! But I do not think the tubes are ready just yet.

    --
    9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
  3. It works. by lkypnk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apparently, I am watching a live stream in moderate resolution at full frame rate from the roof of a building in the Netherlands.

    It works.

    I cannot even begin to imagine the ramifications of this if it is adopted by the "pirate" scene. I know its been done with closed source software before, but none of them work as fluently as this trial is. Live streaming television of any channel in the world, or at least, anyone who wants to hook up a capture card, for starters.

    I think we're watching the Internet change, fundamentally and dramatically, before our very eyes.