BitTorrent Unveils Dedicated Live-Streaming App

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While BitTorrent has long been working on live-streaming, Tuesday saw the company release its app designed to make streaming a breeze that will launch, if it hasn’t already in your area, this week. Following that, June will see a release of the app for both Android and iOS.

BitTorrent promises more is in the pipeline

BitTorrent doesn’t have a wealth of content providers on-board to accompany this launch. Rather it’s small-scale quantity over quality including providers like Clubbing TV, Filmbox Arthouse, and others that include entrepreneurial sites that presumably will offer nothing more shite.

However, the torrent platform provides a foundation to potentially reach millions at the same time which not yet to be accomplished by any streaming venue. As someone who lives in Guatemala with a single CBS affiliate, I’ve relied on “illegal” downloading from torrent sites for years and see me average connection boosted like magic or magic on steroids with the technology of torrents.

BitTorrent is promising users the ability “to view live video with sub 10-second latency and without the need for an expensive CDN.”  (Content Delivery Network)

“To do 10 million concurrent streams in the US? No one’s done it. No one’s come close. You’d have to buy up every CDN,” was how Bob Bowman with MLB.com described the difficulties that BitTorrent may, or may not face, going forward with its most recent offering.

“The most we’ve ever done in terms of concurrents is we’ve kissed two million concurrents [….] That’s two major CDNs, you know, really chugging. And you don’t have back up,” the executive continued.

Bowman is a bit of a dreamer in that he loves to speak about 5G technology well before it’s a possibility or the infrastructure exists. Granted, that is his job but still…..

The man seems quite content to tease an opportunity for BitTorrent to work with MLB.com, yet at the same time realizes that’s quite unlikely.

BitTorrent understands the limitations of the Internet and has always worked within this understanding.

“Current methods for online live broadcasting over the internet scale linearly with the size of the audience — that means that you have to pay more as additional viewers join your stream,” the company shared with its users last year. “Peer to peer online streaming returns to the model of traditional TV, where there is no incremental cost for growth in audience size.”

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