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BitTorrent Is Now Streaming Movies (With Ads). But Where’s The Good Stuff?
For anyone who thinks that full-length movies on the Web are for downloading only should check out the Watch Now section on BitTorrent (you will need Flash Player 9 installed). Launched quietly on December 5 using its BitTorrent DNA streaming technology, Watch Now offers a few hundred full-length movies and TV shows that you can watch in full-screen that start a few seconds after clicking play. The quality varies based on the original video, but check out The Ring (original Japanese version) to see what is possible. It is not HD. But it is very watchable.
A clickable pop-up toast ad for Take TV appears at the beginning. The company is experimenting with the frequency of the ads. One pops up between every 5 and 10 minutes. The controls are limited. There is pause/play, restart, volume, and full-screen. No fast-forward or rewind. [Update: I stand corrected. There is a tiny, hard-to-find fast-forward/rewind button that pops up when you hover the mouse over the progress bar].
The technology works. Unfortunately, the pickings are slim. Other than The Ring, there is not much worth watching. They do have Fight Club, but it’s the Bollywood version. (BitTorrent’s such a tease). The TV shows are even more obscure. Wooden Clogs anyone? Deep South Wrestling? I didn’t think so. You are better off sticking to BitTorrent downloads for now.
The Watch Now section is really meant to be a showcase for BitTorrent’s DNA technology. “This is a demonstration for us at this point,” says BitTorrent President Ashwin Navin. He is convinced that ad-supported peer-to-peer streaming is the how video will be delivered in the near future across the Web. ABC or Warner Brothers, for instance, could use it to stream long-form videos from their own sites. (NBC is planning on using P2P software from competitor Pando Networks to stream its video). Navin predicts:
The browser-based video environment is going to get a whole lot better. It makes a closed-off client experience a lot less appealing to the consumer. All of our customers are embracing the browser to deliver videos.
Hmm, a closed-off client experience. Who could that be? Maybe it is time for Joost to finally embrace the browser as well.
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Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Forget the SanDisk Deal, NBC Direct Will Soon Have Free Downloads in HD
While NBC Universal is making deals left and right to try to make up for the fact that it is no longer distributing its digital TV shows through iTunes, don’t get distracted by all the small-fry announcements. For instance, today it announced that it would make NBC shows available to SanDisk for its new Sansa TakeTV/Fanfare service. Is anyone going to buy a USB TV device from SanDisk? We’ll see.
In the meantime, NBC has something brewing that could actually make a difference to the digital-download appeal on its own site, NBC Direct. NBC will soon start using peer-to-peer technology from Pando to distribute its downloads, a story StreamingMedia broke a couple weeks ago. Yesterday at the Web Video Summit in New York City, where I was moderating a panel, I was able to confirm that a stripped-down version of Pando’s technology will be incorporated into the NBC Direct video player. I also learned something new. The reason NBC wants to go with P2P technology is because it wants to start distributing high-definition videos. Pando’s P2P system can help NBC not just to lower the cost of distributing large files, but also to differentiate itself with HD video downloads. No special Vudu box or SanDisk USB video device will be necessary.
NBC will be betting big on HD to drive viewership of Web video. It is already playing around with HD streams on Hulu, its joint venture with News Corp. And it is not going to be just NBC. HD video is going to come to the Web a lot faster than most people think. It may even come to many people’s computer screens before it comes to their TV screens. Just think about that for a second. If you can get a better viewing experience off the Web than you can on your TV, that might just be the incentive you need to really start shifting away from TV.
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Pando Moves Beyond Email File Sharing
New York based Pando has been breaking away from the P2P file sharing pack, which we reviewed in late August. They claim over 1.5 million downloads of their client software, and move up to 20 TB of data per day between users.
Pando is very easy to use. Once the PC or Mac software is installed, you simply drag a file or a folder (up to 1 GB) into the open window. Pando begins uploading that file to its servers immediately, and opens an email form. Simply type in the email address(es) that you would like to receive the file and hit send. When the recipient opens the email and clicks on the small .pando attachment, Pando begins delivering the file, using Bittorent, from the sender’s computer as well as Pando’s servers and any other people receiving the file. Transfer speeds are unreal - my testing shows minimum speeds of 500 kp/s and top speeds at double that. If the recipient has not installed Pando on their computer, they’ll be prompted to do so before the download begins.
Pando is completely free, and also has useful Outlook and Yahoo IM plugins
Today at 9 AM California time Pando is breaking out of the email paradigm and releasing a free new product that allows people to share files directly from a website. This can be done via an embed or link, and I’ve embedded a message from Pando CEO Robert Levitan below as an example. The same file can be accessed via a simple link as well.
For podcasters and videocasters who don’t have the bandwidth availability to serve files, this is going to be extremely useful. Publishers won’t even need to upload the file to their own server. They can simply drag the file into the Pando desktop software and get a link to add to a website. For others, simply adding a Pando link as an additional option to direct download will be attractive as well. We may add Pando links to our TalkCrunch podcasts as well as offering the file as an enclosure to the post. Listeners can simply choose which option they like, although if they choose Pando the download will be significantly faster and we won’t have to pay the bandwidth charges for their download.
Pando’s new product is so efficient that it will also invite abuse, particularly from users sharing copyrighted materials. Pando says it will passively monitor downloads and comply with any DMCA takedown notices they receive from rightsholders.
Pando has some existing competition in this space, notably silicon valley based RedSwoosh, which we wrote about in July. Both RedSwoosh and Pando have attractive offerings. Pando’s large installed base may give it an advantage in staking out its territory.
Pando has raised a total of $11 million over two rounds of financing. The most recent $7 million round was led by Intel Capital.
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Let’s Share Some Files - Four Services Compared
File sharing has long been a popular use of the Internet. I remember sitting at my laptop and asking a friend to name a song, and then seeing if I could download it off of Napster and play it before he could find the cd on the shelf, put it into the player and play the song himself. I often won those competitions.
The old Napster is long gone, but was of course replaced with many other P2P networks. Today, a significant portion of Internet traffic is comprised of files being moved over bittorent, a popular and completely decentralized way of sharing files.
Bittorent, though, requires some basic technical knowledge and is neither anonymous nor safe. The RIAA and MPAA routinely monitor these networks and attempt to collect IP addresses of computers they believe are involved in the transfer of copyrighted files. And bittorent is notorious for transferring files that (sometimes) contain viruses, spyware and other malware.
Enter private file sharing networks. WASTE was released in 2003 and allowed people to create private networks among trusted friends. Files could be shared without worrying about malware or prying eyes. All that was needed was trust among the members of a particular network. The downside of WASTE was that setting up and participating in a network was not trivial to do. Private networks did not take off and achieve mass use and adoption.
A new crop of services has popped up recently to make it much easier to share files with a private network of friends and other trusted people. Allpeers, Zapr, Pando and Exaroom are all fairly recent entrants.
AllPeers
We’ve followed Prague/UK based AllPeers from the very beginning, and are very familiar with this product.
Allpeers, which is apparently launching imminently (but is not live as of the time of this post), is a Firefox plugin that uses bittorent technology to complete file transfers. You add friends to your AllPeers network and then send and receive files from them. The interface is intuitive, and there are no restrictions on file sizes or amounts transferred. AllPeers is incredibly easy to use, allows transfers of files and/or folders, and works on any machine that you can run Firefox. We also stressed tested the product by transferring very large files and shutting down Firefox and then the computer itself during tranfer. AllPeers picked up where it left off as soon as Firefox was reopened, which is great.
Like the others, AllPeers is free. But, unlike Pando and Zapr, AllPeers completes file transfers without the need to confirm via email first. However, all sides of the transfer must have AllPeers installed on Firefox.
Zapr
Sydney and Singapore based Zapr , which we profiled here, opened up for public beta testing earlier this week - you can sign up here.
Zapr is a downloadable application that looks and feels a lot like an instant messaging client. You can drag files into Zapr and send them to an email address or Zapr username. The recipient(s) receives an email with a link to the file. Clicking on the link initiates a download of the file through the browser. There are no limits on file size.
Zapr is not using bittorent on the backend and does not upload the file to its servers before transfer. The file is transferred directly from one computer to the other, and requires that the sender be online for the file to transfer properly. This also means that if a user shares a file with 100 people, that will trigger 100 distinct downloads from that user’s computer which will hog bandwidth and very likely crush individual transfers. For that reason, Zapr is not really a private sharing network, but really an easy way to initiate a one-to-one transfer. We also had problems restarting a transfer when it was stopped. Also, anyone who gets access to the link can download the file.
Zapr is built on the .NET platform and therefore is only available for use on Windows machines.
All in all, we like the Zapr user interface but its current limitations make it significantly less useful than AllPeers or Pando. Of note is the fact that, of the four services, Zapr is the only one that doesn’t require recipients to have the Zapr software installed on their computer.
Pando
Pando, based in New York, recently reached 1 million downloads of its software. Pando is a desktop application that runs on Windows or Mac machines. Users drag files into the application and tell it the email address of who to send it to. Multiple recipients are fine, and Pando can transfer folders or files.
Pando has an intelligent, bittorent based back end. When you send a file, the first thing Pando does is upload it to its servers. Recipients receive the file directly from the sender as well as the Pando servers, and if there are multiple recipients then the bittorent efficiency effect really kicks in as all recipients also become senders.
Recipients receive an email and initiate a transfer by opening a small attachment (you must have Pando to download the file).
Pando is an efficient and user friendly service. We’d like to see it initiate transfers without the need to click on an email attachment, and the addition of buddy lists would be a good way to ease the annoyance of re-typing the email address of someone you often share with.
Exaroom
San Francisco based exaroom, which launched in late July 2006, is a Windows only service that requires a download. Once installed, a user can share files within their My Documents folder with other exaroom users. New shared files are viewable through the application interface, and downloads are completed via the browser download manager.
Exaroom is a good way to make your My Documents folder permanently sharable with certain friends, but the lack of features compared to the other services make it a less useful product.
Summary
All four of these services are useful tools for sharing large files with a trusted network.
Each is useful for different goals. However, a popular service that we excluded from this review, yousendit (profiled here), also solves the basic need to transfer a large file to another person or group of people. If you are looking to create a long term sharing network, Allpeers is the way to go. It has platform flexibilty (works on Windows, Linux and Mac), allows creation of buddy lists that allow easy multiple transfers over time, and does not require the use of email to confirm file downloads.
Thanks to Nick Gonzalez for research assistance on this post.
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