engadget.com — Bram Cohen and friends are poised to unveil the BitTorrent Entertainment Network on Monday, according to The New York Times, which has pricing details and even a few initial observations. According to the Times, Fox, Paramount, Warner, and MGM will contribute a combined total of some 3,000 new and classic movies to the service.
Feb 25, 2007 View in Crawl 4
blackopFeb 25, 2007
stop spamming your site.
bashFeb 26, 2007
FTP still requires one central source; that isn't P2P.
swift2Feb 26, 2007
It's not BitTorrent; something like this would work, after all, if you could BUY the torrent at $3.99. At any given time, what is the number of people who will seed? (Oh, and do they pay you for seeding? If not, what for?)Another thing to mention: none of these movie-industry approved Windows DRM sites have made money, as far as I know. (By the way, where's the RIAA and the MPAA to INSIST that Windows shares its DRM? (crickets.) Yes, I thought so.)If you could just burn these things, or if you paid the normal price if you didn't seed, but your price was reduced by how long you seeded? Maybe if you seed for a week, you get the whole thing for free? Just asking. I mean, the big problem that any BitTorrent site will have is that, if you want to fully serve 3,000 or more movies, you need to have a full copy on hand, if there's no seeder available. iTunes and the other music libraries have millions of songs. How big would the movie libary be? Ideally, it should have all the movies made to date. And BitTorrent is a terrible way to serve up tons of movies, except this way: you seed as much as you can, and you get free movies. So, when somebody wants to buy a D.W. Griffith silent movie -- film students, but not normal people -- there are seeds available.
reolFeb 26, 2007
I noticed that most people are commenting about the movies being considered by the provider as "rentals". It does say that you will be able to "own" things like TV series episodes, but I have to wonder what kind of DRM restrictions they plan on putting content that we supposedly will own, wonder if those things will be burnable to DVD or if they will only let us use it on the computer. Also, do we have to use the "official" BitTorrent program, or will any torrent program do, that remains to be seen.
jeffersonFeb 26, 2007
I am an avid bittorrent user, other then clearing my conscience why would i pay? I recently got on the joost beta, and I truly think it is the future, full screen streaming video that is pretty good quality especially if you sit back from your monitor a bit, the content is lacking, unless you love National Geographic documentaries in which case your set. Watch for this to get huge, if they can get some studios, or networks on board. And theres the rub.
bvinsonFeb 26, 2007
This is so stupid. Why oh why should I give up my money and my upstream bandwidth to watch a movie. If I am going to have to pay for something I don't think I should have to be part of their distribution network. I say shove off, its a pirates life for me.
cooperaaFeb 26, 2007
I think I speak for everyone when I say "I'm not paying for a movie that takes 2 or 3 hours to download!"
Closed AccountFeb 26, 2007
I really am unsure how this service will work, will I have to seed once i've finished my download? I mean i'll be paying for the media, downloading what I've paid for, I really don't want to have to stick around and contribute to something i've finished paying for.Bittorrent was created for the purpose of distributing large amounts of data as fast as possible. It relies on a User wanting to contribute something for what he or she has gotten from others helping to contribute (Using your own bandwidth)So, you pay for your TV show, I'm not sure how good the quality might be, I can only assume garbage considering Bittorrent are aiming for users who watch TV shows on their computer? WHO watches TV shows or Movies on their computer anymore. And then you kinda have to help seed? (I don't know how it works otherwise, or they are gonna need some decent servers) Whats gonna make anybody want to help the BitTorrent Entertainment Network? It just really confuses me, this is like obviously going to fail.The only way I can see something like this working is everybody pays a cheap monthly subscription (later yearly), you can download as much as you want whenever you want of whatever they offer (and it better be high quality) and it best be DRM free. Oh, and BitTorrent Entertainment Network best hook up with like every Major TV Network and offer everything under the sun to start with or nobodys sticking around for ride they would have us go on. Does this have a chance of happening? Yeah, but only when MPAA/RIAA realise most of their consumers won't stand for being used and ripped off any longer.
offspring06Feb 26, 2007
Don't some ISPs throttle torrent traffic? If so than how is this going to work?