ntl, a UK-based cable broadband company is teaming up with BitTorrent and Cachelogic to conduct a technical trial to evaluate ultra high-speed, legal video downloads in the UK. The trial download service will feature a large amount of licensed broadcast quality video content including popular movies, music videos and television programmes. As part of the trial, Cachelogic’s P2P content cache devices will be deployed in ntl network and will accelerate delivery of the content. BitTorrent client will be used for distribution. If this works, this could have huge implications for legal video distribution. This will also help legitimize BitTorrent, and give a big leg-up to company’s plans to distribute legal content. Clearly media players are beginning to realize that P2P is not going away, and trying to harness the technology’s potential to meet their own ends. Recently Time Warner (Germany) and AOL announced plans to tap P2P for video distribution.
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3:06 PM PT
[...] (via GigaOm) [...]
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6:02 AM PT
Hi Om,
Interesting article, good to see that the broadcast TV industry is learning from its competition in the transmission of content. In the UK the first broadcaster to look at P2P content distribution networks was the BBC which created a bit of a storm here at the time.
On a related note ITN (English TV news provider) and Blinkx have teamed up with a view to providing ad-funded streamed video programming.
10:44 PM PT
Zennstrom (the KaZaaCzar/SkypeMan) started Altnet with Kazaa. Altnet piggybacked on Kazaa and though much criticized for being a rogue ad/mal/what-not-ware was originally intended to deliver premium paid content. After the whole grokster fiasco- it was also hoped to be Kazaa’s saving grace- adding credibility to its operations. but for every 2 paid sound-tracks .. there were 2000 unpaid ones.. no contest eh?! doesn’t matter though.. Kazaa seems to have passed its heydays (and altnet sank without a trace?!) That said .. its a new e-world now .. lets witness LegalP2P 2.0 and hope it fares better! and yes.. some people (including me) do take offence when we hear- “bit-torrent is the new kazaa”!
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