More than a decade after torrent downloading premiered, BitTorrent streaming has officially launched as a public beta. In 2001 torrents were extremely useful, but in 2013 with everything moving to the cloud fewer and fewer people want to download files. After all, why would you want to download lots of large files to your computer (and face possible prosecution) when you can watch or listen to anything you want, from anywhere via an online music or video service?
Using the BitTorrent protocol for streaming though offers significant advantages in terms of reliability, speed and bandwidth. Via Torrentfreak:
“Unlike traditional live streams, reliability improves as more people tune in.
“It’s based on the principles of the BitTorrent protocol. And it’s designed to make real-time reporting, and open expression available to all: eliminating bandwidth, cost, and infrastructure as broadcast barriers,” BitTorrent Inc.’s Justin Knoll told TorrentFreak. “The more people who tune in, the more resilient your stream will be.”
BitTorrent Live aims to prevent annoying “buffering” issues and long broadcast delays.
“It has been designed from scratch as the perfect means of sharing events to the masses in real-time and with low latencies, but without the astronomical bandwidth requirements that traditionally constrain content creators,” Knoll says.”
Check out the new stuff at bittorrent.com.