Live sports
I was using two computers to stream simultaneous games of the American college basketball championships last weekend, when commentator Ian Eagle quipped after one spectacular play: 'Now that's a YouTube moment'. It probably won't be an actual YouTube moment, since YouTube has been yanking copyrighted content since last year. But if highlight clips seem to be locking down, watching live sports over the internet is taking off, thanks largely to peer-to-peer networks.
Sports P2P first appeared in 2004 and 2005, shot to popularity with the 2006 football World Cup, and has steadily gained ground ever since with the spread of broadband. Basically, it is leading to television on your computer.
The technology is related to that of P2P networks such as BitTorrent and Kazaa for sharing music and movies, but it has been adapted to stream TV channels in real time, or at least within a 30-second buffer.
The breakthrough here is touted as a new 'democracy of broadcasters', because the software, which is free, enables almost anyone with a computer and a broadband connection to run their own channel. What people do is buy a TV tuner card for their computers, then just stream whatever it is they happen to be watching, preferably on some channel you'd otherwise have to pay for, such as ESPN. Many of these P2P TV networks originated on the mainland, where there is an enormous population of young, information-hungry, cash-poor viewers. SopCast came out of Fudan University in Shanghai in 2004, TVants out of Zhejiang University in 2006, and TVU Player has operations between California and Shanghai.
On the whole, television seems to have learned something from the music industry's anti-piracy fiasco by moving in early and staking an early claim to online advertising revenues. The NBA has reportedly entered into partnership with a couple of Chinese P2P services for authorised streams.
Major League Baseball and the NFL remain protectionist, but for several seasons have offered live streams of all games to paid subscribers, with video quality that's generally better than P2P. TVU has meanwhile claimed to have signed on non-sports networks including CNN, Fox News and Deutsche Welle in addition to its global grab bag, which includes everything from channels about fishing in New England to most of China's major TV networks.
As for the NCAA tournament, rights holder CBS is streaming every game for free, both to computers and iPhones, with a new Microsoft player that yields near-TV quality. The only in-built control mechanism is that it won't let you flick during commercials.
