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Calling All Broadcasters

blog.bittorrent.com

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Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#31

Post by kzahel »

mtgx wrote: post #25
jiggy2011 wrote: post #10

I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.

I remember reading about a P2P API inside Chrome, but that may have been just an experimental mode for WebRTC at the time. Having a built-in bittorrent technology would be a big addition to browsers, especially if they intend to use the technology for broadcasts to a lot of people in the future through WebRTC.

It seems like in about 6 months or so (crystal ball reading) this will be available in chrome stable. (createDataChannel is not yet implemented even in Chromium trunk)

It's already possible to participate in BitTorrent swarms in pure javascript with only websockets and typed arrays. (https://github.com/kzahel/jstorrent) It of course requires that BitTorrent clients know how to accept websocket connections and use websocket frames to emulate raw socket data (which is not yet the case, but very well could be)

Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#32

Post by Nux »

fungi wrote: post #23
vitovito wrote: post #22

It's interesting that Bram (I assume it's still Bram's show over there) has finally gone with a new streaming-optimized protocol design. We argued about it years ago. Here's Bram in 2004 arguing that live streaming is a niche market: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html In the comments, "streamerp2p" is discussed, which I used as the basis for a proposal for live radio station streams along with Speex, back ~20…

http://www.sopcast.com/ mac/win/nix/droid. we use it around olympics/world cup time. nix client is open source, anyone know an open source server?

The Linux client is not open-source afaik.

Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#33

Post by kzahel »

mtgx wrote: post #30
kzahel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that WebRTC is the obvious choice when it becomes available. It's simply too hard to get people to install a client. For users to install a client, the uses for it must be compelling enough to go through the trouble of installing an application. Dropbox is one example of how people will install software because the product offers something useful enough. It seems like live streaming client programs s…

Can someone create a WebRTC web app in this way, so one person can broadcast to millions through P2P technology? Or would the browser vendors need to make certain API's available before they can do that?

Once arbitrary data can be sent through peer connections via a browser javascript application, then there is no reason why the BitTorrent Live protocol (or some other similar P2P streaming protocol) could not work over WebRTC.

One difficulty I see is actually getting the binary data into a element. It would be in theory possible to write to the file in the HTML5 FileSystem API and point the video element to it, but that would require transmitting the stream in a way that is ameliorable to seeming like a static video on disk.

Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#35

Post by qq66 »

kzahel wrote: post #2

There's a lot of times that I'm watching something on YouTube that's broadcast live (like presidential debates) when I wish there was a less corporate, ad infested version where it was available. I think a P2P solution for events like this would be really cool. I've seen BitTorrent live evolve over the last few years and it's really beginning to mature. It still hasn't seen a swarm at that kind of scale, though.

I've never seen an ad during a presidential debate. Are you in the United States?

Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#36

Post by spindritf »

Nux wrote: post #32
fungi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.sopcast.com/ mac/win/nix/droid. we use it around olympics/world cup time. nix client is open source, anyone know an open source server?

The Linux client is not open-source afaik.

Seems to be https://launchpad.net/sopcast-player

Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#37

Post by [deleted] »

kzahel wrote: post #15
jiggy2011 wrote: post #10

I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.

Opera has (had?) one built in. The difficulty is the necessity of hashing the entire file. Torrents are great for snapshots of large files. I think one of the reasons the torrent protocol is not built-in is that it's simply more complicated and the user experience is not as good. Or perhaps it is because there is a certain stigma attached to using a technology that enables distribution of data, even when it is agains…

[deleted]

Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#38

Post by eps »

There is a 10 year old PeerCast that does (or was intended to do) something very similar. The only difference, which is crucial, is that BT sits on a massive userbase that they may be able to repurpose for bootstraping their project... Though Skype was in a similar position and look how well their Vienna Project is doing (it's dead).

Re: Calling All Broadcasters

#40

Post by mtgx »

thebutter21 wrote: post #5

Seems like a viable solution for a lot different content producers. NASA included: http://nasaweb.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Cut-Costs-By-Using-BitTor...

Maybe this way they won't get their video taken down for copyright infringement next time they land something on another planet.
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