Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#41

Post by pimlottc » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 6:06 AM UTC

0x4139 wrote: post #7

m0dest wrote: post #3

Hosed. Getting timeouts for /details. 2 issues in general, though: (1) The BitTorrent protocol is not hospitable to linear downloading. (2) Pirated video content is extremely incompatible with browser-based playback... stuff like MKV and AVI containers, DTS/AC3 audio, multiple audio tracks, segmented RAR files. If this works even for vanilla MP4 content, I will be super impressed - but the browser is the wrong place…

EZTV YIFI and many more don't pack anymore the data inside rar files, and it works, you can watch silicon valley from an EZTV torrent from here http://iflix.io/#/play/ef87a3f97c653d487dece0e6ea8e60b7731a5...

Hmm, at least that link actually shows me a video widget but I still don't see any actual video.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#42

Post by caractacus » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 7:24 AM UTC

China is so far ahead of the west in real-time (and live) peer to peer streaming. Look at video systems like QVOD (now dying after state intervention), Xigua, JJVod: they all have a central tracker and use swarms of users to supply realtime video streaming. PopcornTime was a decent example of this but China's been doing it for years - it was live television streaming over p2p first with PPLive, PPS, Sopcast, etc and this then morphed into streaming of films and television. All use a slightly modified version of bittorrent. Most use bittorrent hashes to mark content.

I still can't understand why this has been Bram Cohen's main focus for the last few years and he still doesn't have a working prototype.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#43

Post by toyg » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 7:27 AM UTC

caractacus wrote: post #42

China is so far ahead of the west in real-time (and live) peer to peer streaming. Look at video systems like QVOD (now dying after state intervention), Xigua, JJVod: they all have a central tracker and use swarms of users to supply realtime video streaming. PopcornTime was a decent example of this but China's been doing it for years - it was live television streaming over p2p first with PPLive, PPS, Sopcast, etc and…

> he still doesn't have a working prototype

I suspect he still doesn't have a working prototype he can safely monetize. I don't think the wants to move to China.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#44

Post by caractacus » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 7:40 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #43

caractacus wrote: post #42

China is so far ahead of the west in real-time (and live) peer to peer streaming. Look at video systems like QVOD (now dying after state intervention), Xigua, JJVod: they all have a central tracker and use swarms of users to supply realtime video streaming. PopcornTime was a decent example of this but China's been doing it for years - it was live television streaming over p2p first with PPLive, PPS, Sopcast, etc and…

> he still doesn't have a working prototype I suspect he still doesn't have a working prototype he can safely monetize . I don't think the wants to move to China.

Safe is the word but BitTorrent Inc have a habit of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. They've released so many little products over the years. Sync is one of the few examples that has gained some traction. I'd have expected some kind of live streaming beta if there was a decent example around. But from what I've read, he seems to want to market it to legit networks and distributors and they are not going to do business with BitTorrent Inc.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#45

Post by shmerl » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 9:25 AM UTC

BitTorrent doesn't order file fragments by design. So how can you stream it without downloading the whole thing first (to the server at least)? Which defeats the purpose of streaming really.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#46

Post by alkimie2 » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 9:31 AM UTC

Just a couple of not-very-deep comments:

The service did nothing at all on Chrome with ad-block-plus installed.

On Firefox the service did show some very nice blue balls moving from left to right after I did a search on some common video content and selected it, but that was about it.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#47

Post by sktrdie » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 9:32 AM UTC

feross wrote: post #40

This is neat, but what we really need is BitTorrent over WebRTC, for actual decentralized BitTorrent in the browser. See http://webtorrent.io The project's goal is to build a browser BitTorrent client that requires no install (no plugin/extension/etc.) and fully-interoperates with the regular BitTorrent network. We use WebRTC Data Channels for peer-to-peer transport. WebTorrent is designed to match the BitTorrent pro…

Nice! Why not create a different protocol then if they're not yet compatible? Adoption for a browser-based p2p streaming tool should be seamless. If the only problem is BitTorrent integration, go your own way.

ps: your site seems down.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#48

Post by hayksaakian » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 9:33 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #45

BitTorrent doesn't order file fragments by design. So how can you stream it without downloading the whole thing first (to the server at least)? Which defeats the purpose of streaming really.

You use a client which request fragments in a specific order.

This is not something new.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#49

Post by Macuyiko » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 9:36 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #45

BitTorrent doesn't order file fragments by design. So how can you stream it without downloading the whole thing first (to the server at least)? Which defeats the purpose of streaming really.

You can. BitTorrent doesn't order file fragments by design, but clients can choose to ignore this and request pieces in order. See Popcorn time and many other implementations out there.

Re: Realtime streaming from torrents in the browser

#50

Post by cbhl » Sun, Sep 07, 2014, 11:11 AM UTC

Macuyiko wrote: post #49

shmerl wrote: post #45

BitTorrent doesn't order file fragments by design. So how can you stream it without downloading the whole thing first (to the server at least)? Which defeats the purpose of streaming really.

You can. BitTorrent doesn't order file fragments by design, but clients can choose to ignore this and request pieces in order. See Popcorn time and many other implementations out there.

Why don't the other clients in the swarm penalize the client for this behaviour? Downloading all the fragments in order means that if the initial uploader drops off, everyone is stuck.