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> You'd need to build out your own infrastructure if you want to deliver videos cost-effectively. For non-streaming video web-torrent is probably the best atte
by uk_programmer 7y ago
> You'd need to build out your own infrastructure if you want to deliver videos cost-effectively.
For non-streaming video web-torrent is probably the best attempt I've seen as it offloads bandwidth to the viewers.
However the real problem that is impossible to get around is storage. To run a moderately large site the largest cost is storage as you will be seeding a copy of the video.
The few competitors (which are about <1% of youtube's views) are built quite poorly IMO.
You won't beat youtube by copying it. You need to build something new that addresses many of the short comings.
- FeepingCreature 7y agoPeople want local copies of videos anyways, to get around takedowns. So why not do a Freenet-like thing where videos that you like are cached on your host, so you keep hosting them for others?
- uk_programmer 7y agoWebTorrents work like regular torrents and can be downloaded via a torrent client. You could just provide a magnet link.
- SpelingBeeChamp 7y agoAnd how do the content creators get paid in this torrent-based system? That’s the “real problem” with it. It won’t have high quality content. (At least not legally.)
- uk_programmer 7y agoOn a site (which uses webtorrent) you can either serve ads (like youtube does), BAT (or equivalent) or have a subscriber model. I would wage most people won't even know they are being served by the web torrent mechanism when you hit the page. The video player looks like a regular html 5 video player. You can just point youtube-dl at a video. However the vast majority of viewers just use the site / phone app.