Peer-to-Peer Internet Television

Lanaki writes "A non-profit based in Austin, TX is merging the free software and Copyleft communities through a new internet TV station: ACTLab TV. They are streaming Creative Commons, Copyleft, public domain content, and original videos using Alluvium software and their own media player. It's all open source, encouraging others to make their own audio and video streams. Their website was released this week and the player and demo stream will go public next week."

Big Whoop

[14erCleaner]

Wow, it's like public-access cable TV, only world-wide. Whoopee.

Epileptics beware!

[Scrameustache]

Why do they feel the need to surround their text with agressivly flashing graphics?

I couldn't get past the first paragraph before I'd had enough of this. Call me back when they offer a non-stroboscopic version of their content.

I'm glad

[aonaran]

I was wondering when someone was going to try and organize Creative Commons stuff into a central TV station that people can go to.
The name isn't very good. ACTLab doesn't feel like a name for a place to go for media... but that's ok.

Good timing on the /. announcement. If there is no media or software to download yet they might not be slashdotted.

Re:Big Whoop

[Trigun]

Hey, some very good programming can be found on cable-access. Many old horror shows came out of local broadcast, and when those channels had to go to networks, the cable access took over. MST3k got its start on local access, and anyone over 40 can remember the local shows featuring clowns showing cartoons on Saturday mornings, and personalities such as the Ghoul or Zacherly, which graced only local markets.

Re:Big Whoop

[/ASCII]

What advantage does this have over regular public-access cable:

• Your show is always on prime time, which probably doubles your audience
  
• Your show is distributed all over the world, which probably increases the audience by an order of magnitude
  
• Once the technology becomes mainstream, more people can watch stuff like this from work, which probably increases your audience by an order of magnitude.
  

So, given the above information, and some usage statistics about public access television, we can conclude that about two hundred people will watch a regular show, and all of them will be the mother of the shows creator.

Re:Bit Torrent TV

[Chyeld]

And suddenly we have a world where people can only watch the first half of a show because all the seeds drop off once the show is finished and never upload the last 30 sec to anyone.

No thanks, I'd rather have the current setup where the most rare piece is the highest priority and simply "Tivo" the shows.

Re:Not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with your condescending attitude? In one sentence you call people sheep for only seeing wide release movies and then cite the very cause for them doing this (advertising budgets). You fail to mention that A) No one is going to see a movie they don't know exists and B) Most independent films are available in a very small number of locations.

Also, a movie isn't automatically better because it's independent. IMO, the only advantage indie films have is they're not focus tested to death so they often aren't so formulaic. The ratio of good to bad movies is about the same for indies and major studio releases. I'd say 90-95% of all movie releases can go straight in the garbage, regardless of what entity actually produced the movie (and I'm someone who loves movies).

*Upstream* is not.

[EvilStein]

4mbit down, 384kbps up... typical Comcast cable modem.
1.5mbit down, 128-384kbps up.. typical SBC DSL line.

*Downloading* a video blog might not be too much of a hassle, but *uploading* one is going to turn a lot of people off from it.

Let's not forget all of the poor saps that are still on dialup. ;)