Bittorrent Launches Distributed Live Stream
live.bittorrent.com
live.bittorrent.com
They didn't even need a loud name to make the technology work.
P2P can certainly lower the bandwidth requirements of the host, but for the user experience to be smooth, the video has to start right away and right now the live client appears to be taking a long time to establish connections with other peers. During that time, the user has to wait.
If the system would download from a dedicated web host in addition to peers, the experience would be much smoother, IMHO. Heck, you could even use the technology to enhance basically anything on the web by using the normal HTTP data stream, but also looking for peers with data from the same URL to increase download speed.
Right now it looks like you need a critical mass of clients viewing the video before it'll even work. I've been sitting on the video for about 5 minutes with any video appearing. My network connection shows several open connections from BTLive, but it's not sending or receiving any data.
http://swarmplayer.p2p-next.org/
The W3C also works on standards for P2P distribution. See:
The saddest thing anyway in my opinion is that the man featured must raise funds for his healthcare, otherwise, his words, "he wouldn't be alive today".
So only rich people have the right to live in US?
And no that's not socialist or communist, it's just common sense because many rich men were just born rich, their families may have been rich from generations, so the "survival of the fittest" doesn't make any sense at all here.
What's funny is that the same people who vehemently oppose any form of socialized medicine would likely be appalled by the notion of having to pay out of pocket to call the police (or perhaps, monthly crime insurance premiums?). The one that we're used to is so normalized that it's unthinkable to do without, while the other is a scary abomination concocted by foreigners.
In fairness, some libertarians do favor privatizing things like fire and police, in which case I respectfully disagree, but admire their consistency.
Look at anyone with lots of money: They're already paying for private security services (technological or human) because there isn't much faith in the response time or usefulness of police in many instances.
It's different. 100% of the population doesn't need to use the police or fire. I've never had to use either my entire life, but I've gone to the doctor many times.
I don't like the current system, but complete socialization isn't what I want either. When you socialize it completely, private care is truly in the hands of the very rich (because private companies can't compete with the government). Take a look at the UK for a good example of this.
I would like to be able to pay for better care, if I have the money and complete government care means I will have no options but to take what the government gives me, which is usually sub-par (or ends up that way when the government runs out of money).
In addition to this, when something is free (or can't feel it because they are paying money in taxes), people generally don't appreciate it, and in fact, will abuse it. We will have more people in the hospitals for things that don't require medical care with less room for people that actually need it.
I see a parallel with tech support. If you are the tech guy that always helps people out for free, you (the resource) will eventually get tired of helping everyone out for free because people will come to you with questions they could have easily Googled or figured out themselves (like going to the hospital for something that doesn't require a doctor's attention). If you charge money (even if it's a little bit), only the serious people will ask you to do work for them.
I think many people (including myself) got into trouble with credit cards because of this. I would buy things and I it didn't really feel like I was spending money. $20,000 later, I felt it, but it was almost too late by then. It took me 3 years to pay it off. Now, I only spend money that I have and $10 feels like I'm spending $10.
Money is a good way of dividing up a finite resource. Hospitals are a finite resource. If we got rid of the insurance companies, hospitals wouldn't be able to charge $80 for Aspirin, because most people can't afford it. We would see the actual cost for things and the rates for everything would go down.
A small percentage of the population would still need some form of subsidized, government care, but it could easily be supported by the rest of the system.
Nobody will talk about the downsides of universal care. All of the supporters will only talk about how great it is. I want to know both sides and if you can't tell me as a supporter, I'm less likely to listen to you in the future.
That's actually the problem with the current American system. Because people have to pay, they avoid going to the doctor early when the care could be preventative, and instead end up in the emergency room. Healthcare is something that is cheaper when used frequently.
A market is just a means of determining distribution of a rivalrous resource. If it wasn't money, it would be something else (influence, political power, etc).
Having money, in general, is a proxy for the ability to create wealth. Thus, if you can't save everyone, and you have to use some mechanism for choosing who to save, then choosing to save the rich is a decent proxy for saving the people who create wealth. I happen to think that's a better system than some of the others ('who you know', 'how "good" your politics are')
Wouldn't it be a lot better if we could spend more resources on preventing disease by removing the disincentive for going to the doctor for early detection? Not to mention, with communicable diseases, herd immunity is a very real thing.
People die here all the time, it's crazy! I've never heard of even one person who lived forever. /s
* StreamTorrent
* SopCast
* TVUPlayer
* Tvants
* Veetle
* PPStream
* UUSEE
* PPlive
* Spvod
Thus BitTorrent is hardly on to a new thing here, but let's hope they can inspire some real improvements as the software is neither perfect nor mainstream.
I actually remember using PeerCast a long time ago. It was based on the Gnutella protocol IIRC.
The term "peercasting" also seems to have not survived to this day.
With Adobe's decision to dump support for smartphones, tablets and TVs, we're likely to see a huge push from them in this market, as IIRC they enabled P2P technologies in flash a while back. If Sopcast releases a browser based version, I see no reason why it can't rule the space given it's already overwhelming popularity.
As a side issue... apparently you didn't read the single line of text I had written. Maybe that's why text is so underrated, and everyone tries to simplify things until there's just one button to push, and it's big and colorful?
It seems many people in this thread came late to the stream, after the event was over (it was from 8:00pm to 10:00pm Pacific), so that explains why some of you weren't able to view the stream (we're working on adding archives of past streams soon).
If you'd like to be emailed invitations to future events, just fill out the email subscription link here: http://live.bittorrent.com/
If you have ideas or suggestions, you can add or vote on them here: https://bittorrentlive.uservoice.com/
It looks like a lot of you have questions about the technical details of the protocol. I'm not sure how much we're ready to disclose, but I'll mention this to the team and perhaps we can put together a juicier "about" page.
Thanks again.
Website is pretty, but it would be prettier to show the min requirements.