BitTorrent Live Hopes to Capture Digital Broadcast Market

BitTorrent has taken the wraps off of BitTorrent Live, a live streaming service in beta designed to establish a direct connection between amateur broadcasters and their viewers. It said that the technology transforms each person tuning in into "a miniature broadcaster."

The platform relies on the same peer-to-peer technology BitTorrent is known for in terms of file sharing. For the past three years however, company founder Bram Cohen has been working on a way to serve video in an IP broadcast environment more efficiently, according to TechCrunch.

Of course, Ustream, YouTube and others are already working on cracking the digital online broadcast nut at scale, but Cohen is banking on the peer-to-peer architecture to provide a differentiator. After installing a browser plug-in, video delay averages less than five seconds, the company said.

BitTorrent is also planning to use the technology to swim upstream, targeting TV stations and other large corporations looking for more cost-efficient ways to deliver high-scale digital video.

Cohen demonstrated the technology at the SF MusicTech Summit. "My goal is to kill off television," Cohen said, telling TechCrunch that "Television's physical infrastructure is inevitably going to go away, but TV as a mode of content consumption is here to stay."

Source: RapidTV News