BitTorrent Is Now Streaming Movies (With Ads). But Where's The Good Stuff?
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.