This is a Big Deal. A Huge Big Deal.
Or to put it another way, we find it kinda cool:
by Ernesto
Hoping to revolutionize live broadcasting on the Internet, Bram Cohen has filed a patent application for the new BitTorrent Live streaming protocol. BitTorrent’s inventor has worked on the new technology for several years and believes his new protocol can be world-changing. “We plan to shape the future of live broadcasts and want to work with broadcasters to accomplish that,” Cohen says.
Earlier this month BitTorrent Live was unveiled to the public.
The new protocol allows the public to send a video stream to millions of people, without having to invest in expensive bandwidth.
Around the same time as BitTorrent Live was launched the underlying patent applicationwas published online. In it, Cohen describes what makes the technology so unique and TorrentFreak caught up with BitTorrent’s creator to find out more.
It took nearly half a decade before BitTorrent’s live stream service was released to the public. One of the main reasons is that it has been quite a challenge to make it work seamlessly. BitTorrent’s inventor is known for his passion for puzzles, and the streaming challenge is probably one of the most difficult puzzles he has solved to date.
“Doing live streaming well on the Internet has long been a problem. Peer to peer live-streaming has always suffered from high latency, meaning there is typically a lot of delay between when a broadcast happens and when end users see it, typically dozens of seconds or minutes,” Cohen told TorrentFreak.
“BitTorrent Live allows a broadcaster to stream to millions of people with just a few seconds of latency. This is new, and unique, and potentially world-changing,” he adds.
Technology triumphant! The way TVWriter™ sees it, BigMedia is just about to embrace its former arch nemesis, Bram Cohen, as their savior. Watch.