6 ms·

Calling All Broadcasters

118 points by marioestrada 14y ago

Do you have a Ustream channel? A justin.tv following? A webcam, and a dream? Do you want to help invent the next generation of live streaming? Cool. We’re looking for people like you.

kzahel 14y ago
There's a lot of times that I'm watching something on YouTube that's broadcast live (like presidential debates) when I wish there was a less corporate, ad infested version where it was available. I think a P2P solution for events like this would be really cool. I've seen BitTorrent live evolve over the last few years and it's really beginning to mature. It still hasn't seen a swarm at that kind of scale, though.
- qq66 14y ago
  I've never seen an ad during a presidential debate. Are you in the United States?
- ams6110 14y ago
  Are you opposed in general to people earning money by providing you streaming content you're interested in, or would you prefer to pay for it directly rather than have ads?
chadfarth83 14y ago
This seems like a very useful tool for people who cannot afford big servers.
joeguilmette 14y ago
I hope YouTube et al are asleep at the wheel long enough for this to take control of large scale live events away from them - the Baumgartner jump, the debates, it'd be nice to see these handled by P2P technology...
- marshray 14y ago
  Well, maybe. In reality they really only need their hands on the control channel (whatever that is here) and can leave the bulk data delivery to peer-to-peer routing like the internet was designed for.
thebutter21 14y ago
Seems like a viable solution for a lot different content producers. NASA included: http://nasaweb.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Cut-Costs-By-Using-BitTorrent-Live-Stream/296563-19702 http://nasaweb.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Cut-Costs-By-Using-BitTor...
- mtgx 14y ago
  Maybe this way they won't get their video taken down for copyright infringement next time they land something on another planet.
hack_edu 14y ago
This would be perfect for massive scale streaming events, like the Felix Baumgartner skydive record jump or the Mars Rover landing. Youtube estimated that the skydive record's live stream used at least 10% of all Internet traffic while it was streaming and they were hard pressed to keep up. The only way they said they could scale further would be some sort of P2P option.
404error 14y ago
Stream Torrent works pretty well too. http://stream-torrent.en.softonic.com/ http://stream-torrent.en.softonic.com/
- kzahel 14y ago
  windows only, and disclaimers about it being unsupported on that site.
KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago
Can this be further developed to replace Facetime and Skype? /cross fingers.
- kzahel 14y ago
  Facetime and Skype and Hangouts are mostly for 1-1 communication or small group communication. I think the aim for this is to enable anyone to a live broadcast to as large an audience as they wish. Like justin.tv, or ustream
jiggy2011 14y ago
I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.
- kzahel 14y ago
  Opera has (had?) one built in. The difficulty is the necessity of hashing the entire file. Torrents are great for snapshots of large files. I think one of the reasons the torrent protocol is not built-in is that it's simply more complicated and the user experience is not as good. Or perhaps it is because there is a certain stigma attached to using a technology that enables distribution of data, even when it is against the wishes of the creator of the data.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > I think one of the reasons the torrent protocol is not built-in is that it's simply more complicated and the user experience is not as good. That's self-fulfilling - if it were built into the browser, there's no reason you'd really have to know. (Presumably you wouldn't run into the "zero-seeders" problem if the servers acted as seeders - they're currently serving 100% of the file anyway (without torrenting), so torrenting would only reduce that.)
  - ZoFreX 14y ago
    Note to anyone planning on using Opera's client: it's terrible, out of spec, and banned on many bittorrent sites. I don't think the complexity and user experience issues are completely intrinsic to the protocol - BitTornado (sadly, another client that misbehaves, and hasn't been updated in 6 years) was hands-down the easiest for less techy people to use and understand. (Each download has its own window and instance of the program, making it look and feel very similar to downloading in Internet Explorer) Why do you say the difficulty is in hashing the entire file? BitTorrent divides the files into small chunks and hashes those, so downloading lots of small files vs downloading one big one doesn't make a lot of difference (with a few caveats - some clients support an additional hash on each file, which can save you re-downloading data if two files share a block and only one is changed, and some clients add padding data so there is only one file per block. In practice, these are both very rare)
runn1ng 14y ago
if I get it right, BitTorrent live is a centralized server with a proprietary (?) client? I don't think that's the lesson to take from BitTorrent.
- kzahel 14y ago
  AFAIK, the centralized server is not a strict necessity in terms of the functionality of the core protocol. It is more of a business decision to require the central server to authorize the stream (I believe each stream has a key that must be signed by the central server). This way, DMCA can be respected and liability issues are less of a concern.
Joeboy 14y ago
Is this not the sort of thing IP multicast is for?
- wmf 14y ago
  IP multicast is turned off on the Internet.
  - bvdbijl 14y ago
    Thank god... imagine the incredible noise
    - sargun 14y ago
      What do you mean? The whole point of multicast is that you don't have noise. You choose exactly what you want to get.
  - timthorn 14y ago
    Depends on which bit of the Internet - the BBC transmits (or at leat used to) live streams via Multicast to a number of UK ISPs.
tarkin2 14y ago
I'd like to see people streaming demonstrations etc using this. And then others could make the stream more resilient. I installed the client in Debian and live.bittorrent.com worked well with Chrome at least. Once I see open source clients and streamers, then I'll be really excited.
dysoco 14y ago
I love the idea, I'd like to stream but I have about 256kb/s of upload speed and using TwitchTV or so it's impossible.
EvanAnderson 14y ago
Bittorrent always makes me think about transfer-capped Internet connections. It feels like even wireline-based Internet connections in the USA are moving toward being transfer-capped. I don't see how Bittorrent works in that world.
vitovito 14y ago
It's interesting that Bram (I assume it's still Bram's show over there) has finally gone with a new streaming-optimized protocol design. We argued about it years ago. Here's Bram in 2004 arguing that live streaming is a niche market: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html In the comments, "streamerp2p" is discussed, which I used as the basis for a proposal for live radio station streams along with Speex, back ~2005, when bandwidth was expensive. It's still around, apparently: http://www.streamerp2p.com/ http://www.streamerp2p.com/ Bittorrent itself can do streaming of static content: just request the blocks in order. It can also do streaming of live content if you chunk the live content and have an out-of-band way to update the torrent you're looking for, but that's not great. In my proposal I mention some other systems as well: Peercast: http://web.archive.org/web/20060207013338/http://www.peercast.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20060207013338/http://www.peercas... (defunct, Internet Archive link) P2P-Radio: http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/ http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/ (defunct) Allcast: http://web.archive.org/web/20060805040005/http://allcast.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20060805040005/http://allcast.com... (defunct, Internet Archive link) Chaincast (dead and blocked from IA) Abacast: http://web.archive.org/web/20061017041905/http://www.abacast.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20061017041905/http://www.abacast... (IA link, they're still around but now cloud-based) Xiph's IceShare: http://wiki.xiph.org/IceShare http://wiki.xiph.org/IceShare (defunct) Robert Haarman's StreamDist prototype: http://inglorion.net.nyud.net:8090/software/#streamdist http://inglorion.net.nyud.net:8090/software/#streamdist Andrew Brampton's research and prototype: http://web.archive.org/web/20100325135652/http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/brampton/fyp/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100325135652/http://www.lancs.a... (IA link) Onion Networks' Swarmstreaming (defunct and blocked) The proposal isn't worth posting any more; all the assumptions and business cases are obsoleted. Today, rather than use a client at all, I'd probably push for WebRTC P2P support, funding patches in all the browsers and their mobile versions, incentivize people to upgrade their browsers, host with cheap bandwidth for everyone else, and just hold on until enough of the market has upgraded.
- fungi 14y ago
  http://www.sopcast.com/ http://www.sopcast.com/ mac/win/nix/droid. we use it around olympics/world cup time. nix client is open source, anyone know an open source server?
Nux 14y ago
Where's the linux client? Where's the source for the client?
eps 14y ago
There is a 10 year old PeerCast that does (or was intended to do) something very similar. The only difference, which is crucial, is that BT sits on a massive userbase that they may be able to repurpose for bootstraping their project... Though Skype was in a similar position and look how well their Vienna Project is doing (it's dead).
sopranno 14y ago
streemig for freedom, long live the live-bittorrent.
astro1138 14y ago
I'm super excited by this but where are the specs?

118 points by marioestrada 14y ago

Do you have a Ustream channel? A justin.tv following? A webcam, and a dream? Do you want to help invent the next generation of live streaming? Cool. We’re looking for people like you.

kzahel 14y ago

There's a lot of times that I'm watching something on YouTube that's broadcast live (like presidential debates) when I wish there was a less corporate, ad infested version where it was available. I think a P2P solution for events like this would be really cool. I've seen BitTorrent live evolve over the last few years and it's really beginning to mature. It still hasn't seen a swarm at that kind of scale, though.

qq66 14y ago
I've never seen an ad during a presidential debate. Are you in the United States?
ams6110 14y ago
Are you opposed in general to people earning money by providing you streaming content you're interested in, or would you prefer to pay for it directly rather than have ads?

chadfarth83 14y ago

This seems like a very useful tool for people who cannot afford big servers.

joeguilmette 14y ago

I hope YouTube et al are asleep at the wheel long enough for this to take control of large scale live events away from them - the Baumgartner jump, the debates, it'd be nice to see these handled by P2P technology...

marshray 14y ago
Well, maybe. In reality they really only need their hands on the control channel (whatever that is here) and can leave the bulk data delivery to peer-to-peer routing like the internet was designed for.

thebutter21 14y ago

Seems like a viable solution for a lot different content producers. NASA included: http://nasaweb.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Cut-Costs-By-Using-BitTorrent-Live-Stream/296563-19702 http://nasaweb.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Cut-Costs-By-Using-BitTor...

mtgx 14y ago
Maybe this way they won't get their video taken down for copyright infringement next time they land something on another planet.

hack_edu 14y ago

This would be perfect for massive scale streaming events, like the Felix Baumgartner skydive record jump or the Mars Rover landing. Youtube estimated that the skydive record's live stream used at least 10% of all Internet traffic while it was streaming and they were hard pressed to keep up. The only way they said they could scale further would be some sort of P2P option.

404error 14y ago

Stream Torrent works pretty well too. http://stream-torrent.en.softonic.com/ http://stream-torrent.en.softonic.com/

kzahel 14y ago
windows only, and disclaimers about it being unsupported on that site.

KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago

Can this be further developed to replace Facetime and Skype? /cross fingers.

kzahel 14y ago
Facetime and Skype and Hangouts are mostly for 1-1 communication or small group communication. I think the aim for this is to enable anyone to a live broadcast to as large an audience as they wish. Like justin.tv, or ustream

jiggy2011 14y ago

I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.

kzahel 14y ago
Opera has (had?) one built in. The difficulty is the necessity of hashing the entire file. Torrents are great for snapshots of large files. I think one of the reasons the torrent protocol is not built-in is that it's simply more complicated and the user experience is not as good. Or perhaps it is because there is a certain stigma attached to using a technology that enables distribution of data, even when it is against the wishes of the creator of the data.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > I think one of the reasons the torrent protocol is not built-in is that it's simply more complicated and the user experience is not as good. That's self-fulfilling - if it were built into the browser, there's no reason you'd really have to know. (Presumably you wouldn't run into the "zero-seeders" problem if the servers acted as seeders - they're currently serving 100% of the file anyway (without torrenting), so torrenting would only reduce that.)
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  Note to anyone planning on using Opera's client: it's terrible, out of spec, and banned on many bittorrent sites. I don't think the complexity and user experience issues are completely intrinsic to the protocol - BitTornado (sadly, another client that misbehaves, and hasn't been updated in 6 years) was hands-down the easiest for less techy people to use and understand. (Each download has its own window and instance of the program, making it look and feel very similar to downloading in Internet Explorer) Why do you say the difficulty is in hashing the entire file? BitTorrent divides the files into small chunks and hashes those, so downloading lots of small files vs downloading one big one doesn't make a lot of difference (with a few caveats - some clients support an additional hash on each file, which can save you re-downloading data if two files share a block and only one is changed, and some clients add padding data so there is only one file per block. In practice, these are both very rare)

runn1ng 14y ago

if I get it right, BitTorrent live is a centralized server with a proprietary (?) client? I don't think that's the lesson to take from BitTorrent.

kzahel 14y ago
AFAIK, the centralized server is not a strict necessity in terms of the functionality of the core protocol. It is more of a business decision to require the central server to authorize the stream (I believe each stream has a key that must be signed by the central server). This way, DMCA can be respected and liability issues are less of a concern.

Joeboy 14y ago

Is this not the sort of thing IP multicast is for?

wmf 14y ago
IP multicast is turned off on the Internet.
- bvdbijl 14y ago
  Thank god... imagine the incredible noise
  - sargun 14y ago
    What do you mean? The whole point of multicast is that you don't have noise. You choose exactly what you want to get.
- timthorn 14y ago
  Depends on which bit of the Internet - the BBC transmits (or at leat used to) live streams via Multicast to a number of UK ISPs.

tarkin2 14y ago

I'd like to see people streaming demonstrations etc using this. And then others could make the stream more resilient. I installed the client in Debian and live.bittorrent.com worked well with Chrome at least. Once I see open source clients and streamers, then I'll be really excited.

dysoco 14y ago

I love the idea, I'd like to stream but I have about 256kb/s of upload speed and using TwitchTV or so it's impossible.

EvanAnderson 14y ago

Bittorrent always makes me think about transfer-capped Internet connections. It feels like even wireline-based Internet connections in the USA are moving toward being transfer-capped. I don't see how Bittorrent works in that world.

vitovito 14y ago

It's interesting that Bram (I assume it's still Bram's show over there) has finally gone with a new streaming-optimized protocol design. We argued about it years ago. Here's Bram in 2004 arguing that live streaming is a niche market: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html In the comments, "streamerp2p" is discussed, which I used as the basis for a proposal for live radio station streams along with Speex, back ~2005, when bandwidth was expensive. It's still around, apparently: http://www.streamerp2p.com/ http://www.streamerp2p.com/ Bittorrent itself can do streaming of static content: just request the blocks in order. It can also do streaming of live content if you chunk the live content and have an out-of-band way to update the torrent you're looking for, but that's not great. In my proposal I mention some other systems as well: Peercast: http://web.archive.org/web/20060207013338/http://www.peercast.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20060207013338/http://www.peercas... (defunct, Internet Archive link) P2P-Radio: http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/ http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/ (defunct) Allcast: http://web.archive.org/web/20060805040005/http://allcast.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20060805040005/http://allcast.com... (defunct, Internet Archive link) Chaincast (dead and blocked from IA) Abacast: http://web.archive.org/web/20061017041905/http://www.abacast.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20061017041905/http://www.abacast... (IA link, they're still around but now cloud-based) Xiph's IceShare: http://wiki.xiph.org/IceShare http://wiki.xiph.org/IceShare (defunct) Robert Haarman's StreamDist prototype: http://inglorion.net.nyud.net:8090/software/#streamdist http://inglorion.net.nyud.net:8090/software/#streamdist Andrew Brampton's research and prototype: http://web.archive.org/web/20100325135652/http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/brampton/fyp/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100325135652/http://www.lancs.a... (IA link) Onion Networks' Swarmstreaming (defunct and blocked) The proposal isn't worth posting any more; all the assumptions and business cases are obsoleted. Today, rather than use a client at all, I'd probably push for WebRTC P2P support, funding patches in all the browsers and their mobile versions, incentivize people to upgrade their browsers, host with cheap bandwidth for everyone else, and just hold on until enough of the market has upgraded.

fungi 14y ago
http://www.sopcast.com/ http://www.sopcast.com/ mac/win/nix/droid. we use it around olympics/world cup time. nix client is open source, anyone know an open source server?

Nux 14y ago

Where's the linux client? Where's the source for the client?

eps 14y ago

There is a 10 year old PeerCast that does (or was intended to do) something very similar. The only difference, which is crucial, is that BT sits on a massive userbase that they may be able to repurpose for bootstraping their project... Though Skype was in a similar position and look how well their Vienna Project is doing (it's dead).

sopranno 14y ago

streemig for freedom, long live the live-bittorrent.

astro1138 14y ago

I'm super excited by this but where are the specs?