The streaming market has been flooded with upcoming internet TV services and web video broadcasting platforms as of late and BitTorrent has joined the crowd with the latest announcement of its BitTorrent Live app. The app will join the growing population of global video broadcasting platforms to compete with such as Amazon Video Direct, Facebook Live, YouTube’s live streaming, Twitter’s Periscope and Twitch, which Amazon also owns.
The platform that launched last week for Apple TV is described by BitTorrent as a “multichannel, live and linear video streaming platform spanning news, sports, music, tech and youth culture.” Support for iOS and Android devices will come sometime this June.
The company launched beta testing of BitTorrent Live back in 2013 as early testing of its P2P streaming protocol. That program evolved and closed to build a BitTorrent Live app that will employ the P2P protocol that was being tested.
While on-demand video streaming is well established as a reliable content distribution method, when it comes to live streaming broadcasts BitTorrent said there is “an ongoing problem in terms of both performance and monetization.” The company aims to fix the lagging and buffering that is all too common when live streaming over the internet.
“It’s based on the principles of the BitTorrent protocol. And it’s designed to make real-time reporting and open expression available to all: eliminating band-width, cost and infrastructure as broadcast barriers,” said BitTorrent’s Justin Knoll to TorrentFreak.
Currently live streaming requires a CDN to push content files to the end user but the result is heavy traffic from the content source to the consumer since each viewer streaming the same content from the same source generates the same amount of traffic from the CDN. Because the content is coming from a single pipe tons of traffic is being funneled through requiring CDNs to have extremely high bandwidth connections that are still many times unable to meet the demand from consumers. This model leads to bandwidth constraints that limit the reach of live streaming because the more people use it the costlier it becomes and it becomes more difficult to ensure all viewers receive a quality stream.
The P2P protocol BitTorrent is employing will “turn every viewer into a broadcaster” according to the company. P2P broadcasting works by spreading data consumption across multiple users. A user requesting a video could receive the content from the CDN source or from other users having requested the same content as both possess copies of the same content and the model scales according to the number of users. So a request for a video requiring 5 Mbps of traffic could be spread so 5 other users provide the requester with 1 Mbps of data packets for the file or 50 users could each provide 100 Kbps and so forth.
BitTorrent said in a blog post that its P2P live streaming protocol “allows for large audiences to view live video with sub 10-latency and without the need for an expensive CDN or pre-provisioning.” Current centralized online live streaming scale linearly with the size of the audience so the cost of delivering the stream increases as more viewers tune in to a live stream. Similar to the model of traditional OTA TV the cost of delivery will not increase incrementally based on the size of the audience.
“Current offerings fail with large audiences but with BitTorrent Live every viewer that joins a swarm extends its reach by sharing pieces of the video to the others. It becomes more robust with larger audiences and there are no costs associated with the addition of users,” said Knoll to TorrentFreak.
For content creators that wish to stream content on a live and linear video streaming platform the offering is a lower cost solution since added costs for high bandwidth usage required when using traditional CDNs becomes a non-issue although distributing content over the platform will drive upstream traffic on broadband networks. Viewers streaming from BitTorrent Live will overall have a better viewing experience since the quality of the stream will not be negotiated to save bandwidth nor will the stream be interrupted or buffer when the audience tuning in becomes too large for the CDN to handle.
The live streaming platform from BitTorrent could be the solution that the live streaming market needs and wants but it would require a shift now from focusing on the technological aspect of the app to the content offerings and securing deals with more broadcasters including major broadcasters for the service to be sustainable and for consumers to consider it a valuable streaming service.
Most of the major online streamers are tuning their business models to meet the content demands of viewers today that stretch beyond OTT content. YouTube is planning an “Unplugged’ online TV service to offer its huge viewer base content from traditional TV. Hulu is also launching an online TV service, offering skinny bundles of pay TV network streams. Amazon just launched Amazon Video Direct that serves as an outlet for content creators to distribute and monetize their video content over Amazon’s video streaming service, the venture has the potential to spark a huge influx of new original content to Amazon’s platform.
In February BitTorrent, which boasts an audience of 170 million monthly active users teamed up with Rapid Eye Studios to produce and distribute original video content or “BitTorrent Originals” for the BitTorrent Bundle platform. The venture will increase the original programming available on the platform which will add value to BitTorrent as a video platform and could make it a major player in the media business and BitTorrent Live could expand the reach of those originals. But, BitTorrent does not have the brand recognition of the other larger streaming companies and at launch the content options leave much to be desired. The service offers free content on 13 small-scale channels.
Some of the channels included in the service for free streaming include: AWE – a wealth advising channel; Clubbing TV – covering electronic music; festivals and dance music lifestyle; NewsMax – providing latest news and commentary; One World Sports – focused on live, same-day world-class sporting action; and Pursuit Channel – geared towards fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation.
To scale the live streaming platform will require many more media partnerships to appeal to the general population of viewers although as the service currently stands could be a small showing of what the company has planned for BitTorrent Live. It confirmed in a blog post that it will be adding more channels to the free offering. In addition, subscription, ad-supported and pay-per-view premium tiers will be added to the platform. With those additions we could see much more premium content coming to the platform that would increase the values of the service for consumers.
Not much else about the future of the live streaming service has been con-firmed. There is massive potential for a streaming service that has optimal distribution standards compared to the competition if the method is as cost effective and reliable as BitTorrent makes it out to be.
This first ran in Rider Research’s Online Reporter.