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Media

Blog Torrent and TiVo for the Internet 108

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Chris Holland writes "On the heels of the recent launch of the preview release of Downhill Battle's Blog Torrent, Nicholas Reville further articulates his vision of a "TiVo for the Internet" in an interview by James Enck for The Broadband Daily. Nicholas touches on the P2P promise, various players, revenue models, and the healthy challenges coming Big Media's way."
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Blog Torrent and TiVo for the Internet More

Blog Torrent and TiVo for the Internet

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  • This is already being done (Score:5, Informative)

    by digThisXL ( 252109 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:43PM (#11009290) Homepage
    It's called ReplayTV + Poopli

    ReplayTV DVR: http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/replaytv/default. asp

    Poopli Recordings Free Swapping Service: http://www.poopli.com

  • Tivo For The Internet? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wcitechnologies ( 836709 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:46PM (#11009302)
    Your cache?
  • ... this little rant [theappleblog.com] of mine was also kinda directed at them.

  • Karma whore, comin' thru! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:50PM (#11009333)
    mirror here [mirrordot.org]

  • Maybe Slashdot needs it (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I keep getting 503 errors.
    • I keep getting 503 errors.

      I KNOW! I can't live without my slashdot so I just kept hitting ctrl-r again and again until finally after 10 minutes of doing it continuously, I got a front page served up! Repeat the process for reading an actual story and for posting this response! 30 solid minutes where I could be abusing myself flushed right down the toilet!

  • Up next... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:51PM (#11009348) Homepage Journal
    - refridgerator for the Internet
    - shoehorn for the Internet
    - cable box for the Internet
    - "Pure Funk" cd for the Internet

    A Tivo for the Internet is about as useful as the above. Use your browser cache, IM history, email storage options, etc.
    • Then you can store Chicken of the Sea brand Tuna in your Tivo brand refrigerator.

    • Re:Up next... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Woogiemonger ( 628172 )

      A Tivo for the Internet is about as useful as the above. Use your browser cache, IM history, email storage options, etc.

      Well, Tivo doesn't merely record TV shows. It also finds shows you might be interested in and takes the liberty to grab those. So what this Tivo for the internet could do is basically watch what sites you visit, and if you accidentally click on a kiddie porn link, it brands you as a pedophile and helps you get arrested. I, for one, would feel completely safe using it :)

    • Re:Up next... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A Tivo for the internet is much more useful than the above things. For one thing the Tivo already runs on 'the internet' as that is where it picks up its program information from. But more to the point this is about the technically feasible means of implementing TV on demand. Tivo by itself is nice enough in that it time shifts some of the shows that you would like to watch and happened to know about ahead of time. But what about shows that you didn't know about? Why not go fetch them online after the
      • totally agree, also, you even get the chance to watch HDTV quality recording on your computer when you dont have a HDTV cable box. some shows appear early some where else in the world, you get the chance to watch them earlier. at the same time, there are many shows you like that are not available on your local service providers any way.
    • Tivo for the internet was just a bad way to phrase it - it is more of "tivo on demand via internet" type of thing. They are talking about being able to download and watch what you choose rather than record it from tv. It *should* be the furture, but we are talking bypassing channels, distribution chains, advertizing, cable/satellite providers, etc. So too many people stand to loose too much money to allow this to happend. So I am not holding my breath. That being said, I would be willing to pay $1 per episo

      • Re:Not "Tivo for the internet" (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MrAndrews ( 456547 ) <mcmNO@SPAM1889.ca> on Monday December 06, 2004 @04:18PM (#11010195) Homepage
        $1 per episode is the part that is going to trip any of this up. Let's say we can take for granted something like the "long tail" and say that WORLDWIDE, there are hundreds of thousands of fans of a particular show. Let's say that every single one of those (let's call it 500,000) pays $1 to view an episode. That means that the content creator is earning $500,000 for the episode. An average episode of an average show costs far more than $500,000. In some cases, that's hardly a dent in the salary of a big star (which would be part of why you'd be inclined to pay for the episode in the first place). In other words, each episode is almost guaranteed to work in the red. Loss of traction there.

        Now the arguent can go that we'll have online purchasing plus regular TV broadcasting of a show (with advertising as usual), which should give you the best of both worlds. But truthfully, would you bother buying an episode if you could watch it on your big screen TV for "free"? So let's say that half of the potential viewers would rather watch it on NBC than downloading it for $1. Now you have $250,000 earned, and all of a sudden the online distribution method is looking truly useless.

        So to fight that, to get traction, you raise the price of a download to $5. That means off those same 500,000, you're now earning $1.5M. Woo! But still, not that much. Plus, no one is going to buy an episode for $5. That'd be something like $130 for a show in a year! Buy the boxed DVD at the end of the season and you're doing better (plus special features). So the show would never take off. Dead in the water.

        Really, broadcasting has an iron grip on the "TV" world. You can't effectively distribute a series if you make people pay for each episode. The system that governs TV right now works too well --- especially with things like DVDs and Tivo added to the mix --- and no one will try anything new because there isn't as much profit in it.

        I'm not saying I don't agree with your sentiment. I would love to be able to buy episodes like that, too... but there's no good way to transition from what we have to what we want, and there's no good reason for anyone to even try.
        • $1 per episode is the part that is going to trip any of this up.

          I'm not sure. I've thought about TV distribution via Internet for a few weeks now. During that time I've also compiled some statistics about how much shows cost.

          In the USA practically every show I studied remained under 50 cents per episode per viewer household. The most popular shows were also the most expensive, but the prices seem to go hand in hand. I couldn't find a single show that cost over a dollar per episode. (ER might have, but I
          • If a series has only a few hundreds of thousands of viewers globally, it probably doesn't have a huge budget either. (It's hard to see how such a series would survive today.)

            I've been coming at it similarly, from the other side of things. I can't figure a TV show's budget coming in at under $300,000. That's counting on the cheapest of the cheap production (probably without producers, cause they alone can add $200,000 to a budget). But likewise, I can see a show not getting over 500,000 viewers. Being

        • Generally speaking, the viewership of shows is in millions (relatively low ratings of cable shows is usualy about 1-1.5 mil) , which is MUCH more than most shows cost (or should cost)

          Second of all, I actually would WANT shows to operate in direct to viewer manor, which will mean that the show should appeal to viewers and NOT to advertisers as is the case now. Meaning, if not enough people would want to view your show, you should not be making it.

          As for grossly overpaid actors, the economy of this should
          • Two points:
            1) I made the point in another reply, but the 1-1.5mil viewership figure is only workable because there are a decent number of viewers already on a certain network who see an ad for a show and tune in to see it. Without lead-ins or other promotions in a central fashion, a show would have a hard time getting 1.5million viewers like that. Theoretically. This discounts word of mouth or really storng niche markets (which are different from basic niche markets... things like Star Trek or Stargate
        • 1 Neilsen point is approximately 1 million viewers. An expensive genre TV show (like Star Trek: TNG at 1.5 million an episode in the late 80's through mid 90's) averaged around 10 points per first run episode. Or approximately 10 million viewers. If those viewers all purchased your program at $1 a show you are talking about revenue on the order of 6.7 times the cost of the show. And a yearly haul of over 200 million (net).

          According to a November 1992 issue of "California Business" article, Paramount
        • IANAEconomics person, but I've noticed that $1 per song for a $12 song album than buying a $15 - 20 physical CD, but it still seems to be working, at least for iTunes. I realize that there are things that aren't the same between the two markets, but they are similar in some ways.

          Making shows downloadable doesn't mean that people won't still watch them on TV. If there's a song I have on a CD, I'll still listen to it on the radio if it comes on, if it's a good song. Even if I had a copy of my favorite
        • The solution is right under your nose, my friend: More efficiently produced programming. Ditch Hollywood's insane economics for the more creative, more energetic - and better - independent producers who can do the same level of production that Hollywood does for a tenth of the costs.

          http://melano.tv/Black_Sun_Video_Segment.avi

          If we can do this kind of stuff for nothing, imagine what we can do for a tenth or a twentieth of the Hollywood budgets? We'd be thrilled to bring you the new Farscape for $500k a
          • I'm not disagreeing with you at all, but I what you said is interesting to me, so I want to continue the train of thought some. It's true that you can make a show more efficiently than Hollywood does. A typical budget for a real-world show would include payment for each exec producer to take 2 weeks vacation... every episode! So truthfully, there's a lot of fat to cut.

            But let's say we nix all the inefficiencies and get right down to a cheaper, more flexible production model. Where does that leave us?

            T
            • And yes, we are basically in agreement. But to answer your questions directly:

              "But how many models are being used in a show? Can you afford to farm them all out to one person?"

              If we have ten models and a team of six animators with lightning fast machines, we're home-free. We wouldn't hire guys who insisted on putting their triplets through college with one episode.

              And I suspect that you already know that there's much talent out there that fits this description. i.e., actors, composers, animators, wr

        • You need to think outside the US. Now if broadcasters continued screening shows on TV, just as they usually do, PLUS they allowed you to download episodes for $1 as soon as they are broadcasted on TV (in the US), then you would get a lot of people from other countries downloading the episodes as well. E.g. people download from suprnova.org because it takes weeks for the episodes to come out in their countries.

          Yeah, I suppose broadcasters in other countries would see a decline in viewer numbers... But you h

  • Already there (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Ape With No Name ( 213531 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:53PM (#11009363) Homepage
    You should see what Micah Beck [utk.edu] is doing with IBP [utk.edu]. Can anyone say "Distributed PVR?"
    • Works really well for those living overseas. I live in Brazil and get sports for myself and SStreet for the kids. And the service even moves the compressed video files to servers in Brazil to make downloading +600MB files less painful. The trick is getting an account.
      • It basically requires an e-mail address within UT's CS department. But since all undergrad and grad CS department students keep their accounts forever, just impose upon the lowest paid code monkey in your shop. :-)

  • My mom the haxx0r (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Big Yak ( 441903 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:57PM (#11009391) Homepage
    I'm continually suprised at how many people are jumping on the .torrent and eMule bandwagon. Over Thanksgiving, my mother (not a techno-elite) told me that she had a secret... and was pirating Audio Books off the internet using such tools. It completely blew my mind that my mom though of herself as a "hacker" and loved the idea.
    What ever happened to the days when my family couldn't even understand the basics of web pages? I guess that when the tools are so incredibly useful, and so easy to install/operate, it quickly becomes a prevalent technology.
    • The day my mom mentions using bittorrent, I'm going to shed a tear in joy. She's barely email-capable now, that kinda change would be like a paradigm shift without a clutch!
      • Yesterday my mom was installing anti-spyware tools and diagnosing her own computer. She's aware of some of the dangers of bad security on the internet now, and I don't have to do everything for her anymore.
  • I can't get to the linked article.

    P2P IPTV is an Idea who's time has really come. I write about this on my site here [videotechnology.com]

  • Archive.org (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I find archive.org is Tivo for the internet, its great to find drivers from old companies that have gone out of business.

    Its just a shame they dont combine google+archive, now that would rock!

  • tivo for the internet, and blog torrent (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Prophetic_Truth ( 822032 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @03:01PM (#11009424)
    looking at the title, doesn't it dawn on everyone that TV episodes are already widely available via torrents?

  • Bittorrent already does this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bbeebe ( 661968 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @03:04PM (#11009445)
    FTA: We ultimately want to see internet TV Channels that download video in the background and let you watch at your convenience (a TiVo for the internet).

    Why do you need internet channels when there's a perfectly legimate tv network already in place? I use Azureus [sourceforge.net] as my Bittorrent client with a plugin [sourceforge.net] to import any torrents from an RSS feed that match my criteria. Although I've never actually used TiVo I think the basic premise is the same, record the shows you want automatically and watch them whenever you have time.
    • ... already does this as well. This idea would have been news 7 years ago and an obvious idea 3 years ago.

      move along.
    • I did not read the article, but maybe it is because the TV channel is broadcasting whatever they want to, while the internet download would allow me to ( potentially ) watch what *I* want to, when I want to, instead of waiting for the TV channel(s) to broadcast it.
    • Although I've never actually used TiVo I think the basic premise is the same, record the shows you want automatically and watch them whenever you have time.

      It would be except that Tivo is burdened with nasty DRM that prevents Internet-wide show sharing, transfer to non-authorized machines, and so on. Tivo has even recently agreed to implement content-owner usage flags for recorded content - meaning that the content people will be able to delete shows based on their age or number of times viewed.

      ReplayTV

    • FTA: We ultimately want to see internet TV Channels that download video in the background and let you watch at your convenience (a TiVo for the internet).

      Why do you need internet channels when there's a perfectly legimate tv network already in place?

      The article is not about "Internet TiVo". The submittor shouldn't have even mentioned that, since now virtually every highly moderated post has missed the point of the article. The article is about BlogTorrent making it cheap and easy for independent arti

  • Site is slashdotted, so I'm not sure what he's talking about, but here's my ramble. . .

    The closest thing I can think of to TiVO for the Internet is something that lets you save content so you can view it when it's no longer available (which is what TiVO does for TV, really). This can be your own personal Wayback Machine, or just saving pages for later when you have no internet connection.

    Either way, isn't this exactly what tools like wget and Plucker do?

  • slashdotted but link on mirrordot (Score:5, Informative)

    by randalx ( 659791 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @03:07PM (#11009468)
    The site seems to be slashdotted. you can still read the article here [mirrordot.org].

    This mirrordot.org site seems to be doing the trick really well. Is this sanctioned by Slashdot? Anybody know if slashdotted sites are okay with this. Just wondering as I haven't seen a discussion on this service yet.
    • In response to questions about mirrordot from mirrordot.org: "MirrorDot is not affiliated with Slashdot at all." --> it doesn't say whether or not it's sanctioned by /., but it does say they're not affiliated... " MirrorDot, Inc. does try to consider the copyright issues with mirroring other sites and content. We look to things like Google's cache, Yahoo's cache, Coral, and the Way Back Machine as similar and "accepted." They all cache/mirror sites and serve them directly. Likewise, MirrorDot's mirror
    • I am one of the creators of MirrorDot [mirrordot.com]. First of all, thank you (and the MANY, MANY other folks) that have sent compliments and find our site useful when a Slashdot-linked site gets clobbered.

      As is discussed in the MirrorDot FAQ [mirrordot.com], we are NOT affiliated with, nor "sanctioned" by, Slashdot. We are doing this 100% on our own because we got tired of the $#@%^! Slashdot-effect and decided to actually DO SOMETHING about it (rather than just sit around complaining about it). :)

      Perfect? Not even close. But, it

  • 1 comment and /.ed (Score:5, Funny)

    by JemalCole ( 222845 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @03:08PM (#11009478) Homepage
    No google cache of this one - whoese browser cache can we use as a tivo for this web page?

  • TiVo is essentially a buffer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @03:11PM (#11009493) Homepage
    So a TiVo for the Internet would be ... a buffer? That's it?

    OK, so you could "go back in time" and see how a web page changes over time. To do that for every web page is going to take quite a bit of storage. And I think the folks at The Wayback Machine [archive.org] do a pretty good job.

    You could also schedule web pages to be "recorded" so you won't miss them when you're out? Huh? I suppose if you wanted to read yesterday's edition of the online New York Times it might be handy, but online periodicals already have online archives.

    TiVo makes sense for TV since it's a streamed medium. We don't need TiVo for blogs, webpages, Usenet, and so forth. (A TiVo plugin for iTunes would be nice, though!)

    • Wrong preposition (Score:3, Informative)

      by michaelmalak ( 91262 )
      I thought the same thing too when I read "TiVo for the Internet." Nicholas Reville evidently used the wrong preposition. He meant to say "TiVo on the Internet."

      What's really confusing is that Nicholas envisions peer-to-peer video authoring and sharing -- like video blogs, but not shared on the web (because that would require too much server bandwidth) but rather shared as a Torrent. The word "TiVo" does not capture the aspect of independent authoring -- "TiVo" implies time-shifting Big Media.

      So, Nicholas

    • A TiVo plugin for iTunes would be nice, though!

      There's a Tivo HMO plugin [jriver.com] for Media Center [musicex.com]. You can even access your SmartLists and radio stations through any connected Tivo. Now, if they could only do one for ReplayTV [planetreplay.com] I'd be a lot happier!

  • content creators (Score:2, Interesting)

    by maskatron ( 7560 )
    I like the fact that they are trying to make p2p easier for content creators. Once this has been done and a quality filtering process has been established...look out TV. I agree that something like this could make a dent in TV. Not overnight, of course, but the impact will be felt over the next few years.
  • anybody have a working link? I keep getting "Error establishing a database connection!"
  • I'm about to cancel my service on my series 1 standalone TiVO and would love to completely replace the OS. I bought an old RS/6000 a year ago just to have a dev platform. I'm assuming the vidcap drivers are proprietary, however. Anyway, instead of ripping off TiVO and stealing their service, I'd have a grand old time turning the unit into some kind of outlet for experimental video blogs and watching tv shows or movies pulled down via bt.
  • Ok, so the idea of a blog torrent may not be completely well founded, because of the "how many relatives are -really- going to be downloading your home movies" factor.

    But what about HTTP content over some torrent-like system? Might work by basically streaming content out of other people's caches. Flags could be set for certain secure and frequently updated pages (Meta tags already do things such as this) so you don't stream someone else's credit card number from them.

    Large sites could benefit from this
  • Relavent quote about tivo for the internet "We ultimately want to see internet TV Channels that download video in the background and let you watch at your convenience (a TiVo for the internet). All the basic technology is there, it just hasnt been packaged intuitively yet. But its going to happen soon and I think people will be very, very surprised at the quality and diversity and popularity of whats going to sprout."

    bad analogy, downloading shows and watching them is nothing like tivo at all. but, the co

    • bad analogy, downloading shows and watching them is nothing like tivo at all.

      It's actually very much like tivo. Tivo "downloads" shows over your cable connection to its internal hard drive, and then you can later watch them at your convenience. This product would download shows over your Internet connection to the internal hard drive, and then you can later watch them at your convenience.

      the concept is pretty lame anyways since you have to wait for your show to download, it is about as convenient as

  • Just have a look at both www.tealeaf.com [tealeaf.com] and www.xaffire.com [xaffire.com] they are "tivo-ing" websites. At this point you can't point the technology at any particular site but you can run it on your own site and produce a interactive record of activity.
  • There's an interesting article on engadget [engadget.com] on using a combination of bittorrent and RSS to get a tivo-like system on your pc that will download shows automatically for you.
    • and then there was promptly a DDOS of bittorrent tracking sites... which meant I couldn't even reach TVTorrents [tvtorrents.net] to setup the "bittorrent + rss" setup via engadget's guide.

      (it's finally up now *knock on wood*)

      e.
  • Recipe for 4 Layer Buzz Cake.

    1. Preheat your keyboard.
    2. Add your first buzz word Internet to the mix.
    2. Mix in a Tivo.
    3. Stir carefully.
    4. Fold in a bit of Torrent.
    5. If you think you can handle the ultimate buzz, add a dash of Blog.
    6. Finally, post on Slashdot and watch as your buzz word delight gets talked about by thousands.
  • A subject containing the words "blog", "torrent", "TiVo", and "Internet"?!

    This has to be good!
  • ReplayTV already has a "Tivo for the Internet", it's called Poopli [avsforum.com]. Single client-client, but lets ReplayTV owners transfers shows and clips across the Internet. No DRM, no problems. You can also transfer shows to any Java-enabled machine running DVArchive [dvarchive.org] for viewing, storage, or burning.
  • live show watched by million of people. think superbowl, the world cup (caution: may contain soccer), all the NxA's games, george w speeches...this stuff would just clog the internet due to the internet's inherintly two-way nature. (does multicast solve this?)

    now leave the internet for more interactive stuff: games, movie requests, chats,..ie. what it is currently. (blogs being ok)

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