BitTorrent has unveiled the BitTorrent Live, a live streaming service engineered to do away with inefficiencies and infrastructure costs.
Founder Bram Cohen has been working on this project for three years now and has employed the very same peer-to-peer protocol used by the file sharing client. In essence BitTorrent Live directly connects the broadcaster and viewer and enables it to offload 99% of the data transfer to users and achieve just a 5-second delay even with millions of viewers.
BitTorrent Live is a powerful new web-based live streaming technology. Designed to eliminate barriers to broadcast, Live is an entirely new protocol, designed to deliver high quality video to large audiences – with significant reduction in infrastructure cost and network delays.
– live.bittorrent.com
Broadcasters will be able to use the service for free and those looking to make a profit out of it via ads will have to pay a small fee instead of the exorbitant amounts they are paying now. The service is currently in beta and BitTorrent is requesting content publishers to contact them at live-studio@bittorrent.com to help test out their protocol before Cohen and his team can make it public.
Ustream and Livestream will have to be conscious and BitTorrent directly aims at the pay-per-viewer service and if executed well, streaming giants could get a run for their money.