BitTorrent Live needs strategy to gain attention of broadcasters

BitTorrent Inc. will have to develop a critical mass of users and better convince broadcasters it is an ally, not an enemy, before its new streaming application BitTorrent Live can become successful, experts say. Industry experts and consultants told The Wire Report in interviews that BitTorrent, which once called its new streaming application a program intended to “kill off television,” should offer broadcasters compelling data and explain to them that the application is a solution to their bandwidth capacity and cost issues. Similar to the San Francisco, Calif.-based company's peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing application, BitTorrent Live is designed to disperse the capacity demands of video-streaming onto end users who are accessing a stream. In a demo video released on the company’s TorrentFreak blog last year, inventor Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent p2p protocol and one of the company’s co-founders, said the service starts by sending out an originating stream to computers trying to access it. “ machines are then sending copies to each other and then reassembling them into a continuous stream,” Cohen said. Through the use of a protocol for delivering data packets called Micro Transport Protocol (μTP), BitTorrent Live prioritizes video packets into a buffer cache and distributes the stream to end users using the most efficient feeds available at any given moment. The high quality feeds can reduce the impact on local networks without subjecting users to long delays for buffering, analysts say. “BitTorrent Live is essentially an attempted solution at a very fundamental problem in using the Internet at scale,” David Ellis, a technology consultant and York University communications professor, told The Wire Report in an interview. That problem facing many media companies is the distribution of large amounts of information, like video files, while maintaining end-user reliability and minimal network costs. “These aren’t new problems. We’ve had some of the best minds on the planet grappling with this stuff for several years,” Ellis said. BitTorrent Live can help lower costs for small broadcasters, he said. “Once you have enough peer resources, you can get your costs down to almost nothing,” he said. In an emailed statement to The Wire Report, Jason Roks, a technology analyst and a co-founder of Toronto-based company Hotline Communications Inc., estimated that broadcasters could save between 20 and 40 per cent on bandwidth costs by using the Bittorrent application. Gavin McGarry, president of consulting firm Jumpwire Media, said in an interview that he agrees the technology is an opportunity to reduce broadcasters' online distribution costs. “Every broadcaster right now will tell you they’re dealing with huge bandwidth costs and no way to monetize it,” McGarry said. Broadcasters may approach BitTorrent Live with caution, Ellis said, because content owners traditionally are suspicious of Bittorrent products associated with illegal file-sharing. “Where things get interesting is: a) who is going to use it on a wholesale or publisher level; and b) what sort of reception is it going to get from those who … demonize any sort of technology that they perceive can steal other people’s content or infringe on their copyright,” Ellis said. In a public demo of BitTorrent Live at the SF MusicTech Summit last month in San Francisco, Calif., Cohen said his objective with the application “is to kill off television.” In an interview with TechCrunch, Cohen said he was referring to television sets and not the content or television industry. “Television’s physical infrastructure is inevitably going to go away, but TV as a mode of content consumption is here to stay,” he told TechCrunch. David Purdy, vice-president of video products at broadcast and telecom company Rogers Communications Inc., said in a phone interview with The Wire Report that, “when you hear the name BitTorrent, we automatically think piracy.” Purdy said Rogers and other Canadian broadcasters are emphasizing the “TV everywhere” strategy with efforts to put more content online, and as a result are running up against hefty bandwidth costs. “ certainly consumes a lot of bandwidth,” he said, adding that Rogers is allocating “intensive” capital expenditures on upgrading its Internet infrastructure to better accommodate online video consumption. “That’s the primary driver now of Internet capex.” Purdy said he doesn't yet know whether Rogers would consider using BitTorrent Live. Several small broadcasters contacted for this story had not yet heard of the service or did not know enough about it to comment on the record. Public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada said it would consider it. “enerally speaking, we're always interested in exploring technologies that can help us get our content out to as many Canadians as possible,” Angus McKinnon, a CBC spokesman, said in an emailed statement. “ can confirm that we'll look at BitTorrent Live (as we would any other technology),” he said. McGarry said he believes other broadcasters should follow suit. “I don’t think this is a major threat to broadcasters,” he said. “If anything, broadcasters should be calling Bittorrent and saying, ‘Hey, let’s have a meeting, let’s talk about this. How can we use your technology?’” Still in its beta phase, BitTorrent Live is under discussion in online tech forums as the company streams a series of live concerts from California. In a Feb. 12 interview on technology site Twit.tv, Cohen said the company continues to test the new technology for latency issues. He said he is now tweaking the program so that one million peers sharing a video stream would have five seconds of latency. He said he wants to make more efficient use of the Internet, where there are significant amounts of unused upload capacity with end users. “If transfer capacity isn't used, it's gone forever. It's not like it costs anything,” he said. McGarry said the company should draw compelling and exclusive live content onto the service to gain a bigger following. He said BitTorrent could boost the application's users if it aimed for streaming coverage of a major, exclusive event. “People will watch live content, we know that,” McGarry said. “If they can get the rights to a sporting event or the right to a music concert that you can’t see anywhere else, I think they’ll do well.” He said BitTorrent should also find a way to measure the service’s online audiences to better appeal to broadcasters. “Data is the big thing that everybody wants,” McGarry said. “I don’t want to just put something up on TV and have no idea. I want to know who is watching it, and where they’re watching it from.” Ellis agreed, saying “the first and most compelling concern” of broadcasters is “how can I control my audience?”—a question that determines how much they can earn through advertising revenues. Before BitTorrent Live can get to that point, the company should be focused on drawing users, Roks said. “Ultimately for to be truly effective there needs to be a critical mass of users all watching the same thing. The more users the more efficient it becomes,” he wrote. “ could offer overall efficiencies but without many simultaneous users the difference won't likely be noticeable to the end user,” he said. BitTorrent declined to comment for this story. nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

BitTorrent Live needs strategy to gain attention of broadcasters

Broadcast | March 20, 2012

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