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Hollywood interested in BitTorrent distribution?

14 April 2005 14:56 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 2 comments

Dr Vinton Cerf is a name that is quite popular in the computer world because he wrote the original TCP/IP protocol and could be seen as the "father of the Internet". He is also currently chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). He revealed that he has recently discussed BitTorrent with at least two interested movie producers. BitTorrent has already proven itself as a fast and reliable way to distribute large amounts of content around the world.

"I know personally for a fact that various members of the movie industry are really getting interested in how to use the Internet--even BitTorrent--as a distributed method for distributing content," Cerf said. "I've spoken with several movie producers in the last month." Cerf was adamant the entertainment industry still did not understand the online environment. "They are only just now starting to come to honest grips with the possibilities of using the Internet," he said.

He also pointed out what he believes to be a flawed perception that the Internet is capable of providing movies in real-time. "People think of video and they think of real-time, watching it as it's coming out [downloading]," he said. "But most video doesn't have to be watched in real-time. With TiVo and those other things it doesn't have to be watched in real-time." TiVo products allow viewers to record from TV to a PVR device to watch later.

"It doesn't matter whether it's delivered by a real-time video stream, or a triple-charge thing that drops packets into a file like BitTorrent. Who cares? At some point you get the whole file and then you watch it. You don't care how long it took to get a file before you watch it." Cerf added. Also you have to remember that consumers who already use BitTorrent to get movies will be used to waiting for a few hours before they actually get to view their download so a lot of potential customers to a legal movie service won�t be upset by its lack of "real time" capability.

Source:
ZDNet

Permalink to this article

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Discuss this article!
venomX05 (Senior Member) 14 April 2005 18:51
Article was pretty good! It is a good thing that some producers and studios are finally getting the hint. However, there is probably a darker side to this, but oh well! ;) [ + quote]
raven27 (Inactive) 14 April 2005 23:38
It is about time but you know Hollywood say this today and later they did not say nothing. [ + quote]