BitTorrent is the most widely used peer-to-peer filesharing protocol. It's estimated BitTorrent is in charge of 35% of most internet traffic today. Since it's conception by creator Bram Cohen, BitTorrent been known and useful for piracy of files such as movies, television shows, and music. However, legal options have been available. Actually, Cohen created BitTorrent to stay legal, and he hopes to further relationships with media companies and hardware developers to distribute their content. Pirate Bay
Today you need to use BitTorrent to download pretty much any TV show or movie you would like for free and without commercials. They'll be stored on your computer's a drive, ready to watch once you want. Consider it as free TiVo on your PC or free video on demand. Obviously, you can find obvious limitations: you could get in legal trouble, and who would like to watch movies on their computer monitor anyway?
As this technology is growing and mature, we'll move forward from these limitations, and BitTorrent can become an important legal distributor of video content, it will be a major competitor to TiVo and TV networks. Soon, we will be downloading well known television shows from BitTorrent right on your television set. More and more homes is going to be hooked as much as BitTorrent just like they're hooked as much as cable TV.
What steps are now being for this to be possible? BitTorrent's relationship with media companies is continually growing and evolving. Media companies see an obvious value in the BitTorrent community: extremely inexpensive or free distribution of the content. This low overhead cost will keep costs down, and the savings will trickle down to consumers. Using BitTorrent, content distribution companies can quickly undercut services like TiVo and even cable TV by charging less.
Also, a company called Iadea Corp. is producing BitTorrent optimized microprocessor chip which will be implemented to everyday electronic devices like DVD players and television sets. The chip is going to be open to system designers in Q1 of 2007. What does this mean? BitTorrent will effectively be open to to everyday consumers, legally distributed content is going to be downloaded by millions up people, and needless to say, uploaded by those same an incredible number of people. Quality and speed will skyrocket very quickly.
But will people pay for BitTorrent even when free options exist all over the web? Yes, I think so. First of all, a comparatively small number of people are utilizing BitTorrent. Industry is under utilized. Though many people use BitTorrent, merely a fraction of men and women who watch TV shows or movies are utilizing it to acquire their content. This implies, once BitTorrent is available through everyday electronic devices, millions more will come in contact with the network and millions is going to be changed to customers. People already using BitTorrent is going to be enticed because it is going to be legal and the selection and quality of content is going to be on a much grander scale.
Can BitTorret compete with TiVo? No problem. They is likewise competing directly with cable and satellite companies. TiVo requires a regular subscription fee, must certanly be attached to a cable or satellite network, and can only just record what's on TV. With BitTorrent, consumers (hopefully) will be able to decide on between a regular all-access fee or an ala carte plan. Consumers will not necessarily require a cable TV hookup, just broadband access to the internet, so you could even have the ability to cancel your TV service to save even more! Also, an enormous and unprecedented quantity of content is available through BitTorrent: TV shows, movies, video blogs, music, and a variety of content everyone can make at home and then distribute for free. I predict BitTorrent is capable of being the main distributor of multimedia content sooner as opposed to later.
So when did all of this happen? Who knows, but it appears to be on the fast track. Hopefully, within five years, major producers of electronic devices is going to be including BitTorrent within their products. And from there it will grow very quickly and become a regular experience for an incredible number of people.