Bittorrent does the same thing more easily, but neither works for live broadcasts. The technical solution to the HD bandwidth issue is probably ISP level multic

Bittorrent does the same thing more easily, but neither works for live broadcasts. The technical solution to the HD bandwidth issue is probably ISP level multicast, but they'd still only be able to deliver the most popular content, making them effectively "a la carte" cable companies. Perhaps a frame based variation on the bittorrent protocol is the way to go, where you're constantly torrenting sequential blocks of content and viewing with a slight delay. I think people would find that acceptable for live events that aren't popular in their current location, but broadcast is still superior for mass appeal content.