The 15th annual Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, is an independent film festival with a digital twist. There is an impressive line-up of nearly 200 films, most of which are available to download via the festival's website. DVD quality downloads are available for viewing online powered by a video-sharing system from Kontiki. It has many similarities to BitTorrent; files are shared in chunks (swarming) amongst peers.
The files are in Windows Media Video format, and are copy protected, which kind of leaves Mac users out of the fun. Halfdan Hussey, the festival's executive director and co-founder, said the Kontiki-powered system will be available to Mac users by next year. "The internet will be a staging device for direct delivery of indie movies to a user's desktop or home entertainment center," Hussey said. "My prediction is it will bring new revenue to independent filmmakers and distributors outside of the realm of Hollywood within the next two to four years."
Source:
Wired
Source:
Wired
