Poachers Turned Gamekeepers

The obsession with P2P continues to amuse me. 4OD and the BBC iPlayer became successful when they offered streaming, which, from what I understand, makes little use of P2P.

In the meantime NBC is using, well, BitTorrent-like technology, whilst simultaneously briefing against P2P on a corporate level and attesting against P2P operators.

Who would be a major broadcaster, having to fight the very business models they are forced to adopt?

The old saying that it's better to cannibalise yourself than to be eaten alive seems to ring true...

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yes, you are quite right that streaming is outstriping peer assisted downloads in the region of 9 to 1.

However, 4OD's service as you know, has been running far longer and utilised the 'subscriptions' components eg. programme booking, so higher quality downloads are ready to view when DRM license is issued. This has allowed Channel 4 to push out more content in the peer assisted manner gaining significant bandwidth savings.

Similar results can be seen with the Sky Anytime PC offering, where it is a download only service, and no plans from what I see, to offer a more flexible usage model.

The BBC iPlayer has not utilised these subscription tools and omitted their use from their project plan submitted to the BBC Trust.

BBC iPlayer had to offer streaming quickly to fulfill the rather vocal and demanding (justifiably so under its access to all remit) Mac and open source user base.
Iolo Jones said…
Thanks for the detailed insight to my rather sweeping statements!