Streaming video over the internet is one of the most important telecommunication developments in the last decade. Problem is, doing so needs a massive system architecture to support it and the feed is often riddled with lag. A new protocol from BitTorret’s founder is aiming to change all that.
Conventional video streaming — through, say, YouTube — eats up network resources, because each user is pulling in their own individual feed. The live peer-to-peer streaming protocol created by BitTorrent founder and chief scientist Bram Cohen, instead works much like BitTorrent itself does. Everybody that requests a certain video stream, shares it among themselves. This reportedly reduces lag drastically, network load and increases video quality for those watching. And, just like when torrenting, the more people that sign on to a stream, the better it looks.
The new protocol will be tested at NAMM Jam this Friday and should include acts like, oh, I dunno, Testament and Jackyl. You will have to download and install a client to your system, which can be found here. And if you can’t check it out this Friday, BitTorrent is performing ongoing testing every Friday night at eight by streaming a live DJ set from its headquarters. [BitTorrent via WebProNews]
Image: Lia Koltyrina/Shutterstock
Blake
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 3:40 PMIt’s an obvious usage, but it’s great to have BitTorrent behind it. Means it’ll likely get used quicker.
I don’t imagine it’ll become widespread for quite some time, but if I was Google I’d be looking closely at any way to reduce YouTubes bandwidth requirements.
AshR
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 3:53 PMAnd also the movie studios. they can finally find a way (through no work of their own) that they can provide a pay service to access a new movie from the comfort of your own home, say have a release time of 8pm, people with the client will start to stream at that time.
crap what am I saying Patent pending, patent pending, patent pending!!!!
Karl
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 7:00 PMTo do this, would mean that they would have to initially start to seed the video, which means they would have to do work.
Also, some people have really crappy upload speeds but still download at a fair speed, so some people are limited to streaming due to other peoples slow upload.
cleverclogs
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 4:19 PMUltimately this is how the entire INTERNET should bloody work, so that EVERYONE has parts of it all the time.
Dave
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 5:08 PMI wonder how long before sites using this new technology get shut down accidentally because the RIAA/MPAA think they’re streaming illegal BitTorrent content, and don’t bother to actually check before they make such copyright claims (this happened to Revision3 not long ago, when they began to distribute content produced and owned by themselves via BitTorrent).
Franz
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 5:21 PMWell if it can fix that stupid problem of being able to load a video in 1080p really fast, but then taking 20 minutes to load a simple 240px video no one else would be watching, that’d be fab, because I really hate that.
Hellmouth
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 5:29 PMthis idea blows for my internet service provider contract…
i have a set quota and uploads and downloads are counted.
if i want to watch something, i dont want to use any more of my quota than what the video file size actually is.
the other problem would be the leeches, setting their upload speed to 0 and benefitting without contributing.
it is a good idea, but not for everyone i guess.
Jake Drayton
Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 3:06 AMIn utorrent and vuze 0 is unlimited, so they’d be contributing ;)
isaac seguya
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 11:46 PMThis same concept has been used over the years by sopcast and i can bear witness to watching lag free live streaming content. Especially live european soccer.
Kris
Friday, January 20, 2012 at 9:34 AMHopefully one day, bittorrent will be integrated natively into browsers and it will all be seamless