#291685 - 24/12/2006 06:59
BBC & P2P
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pooh-bah
Registered: 27/02/2004
Posts: 1913
Loc: London
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6194929.stm?lsSounds great, but why only the US? I'd love to be able to download stuff that I've missed. And how long till they offer an "official" BBC pay download service, got to happen soon hasn't it?
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#291686 - 24/12/2006 12:58
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: tahir]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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So let me get this straight, they're going to use MY bandwidth to distribute the files to other people, but I'm not going to get a cut of the profits, PLUS I have to pay for the file I'm uploading? No thanks.
Set up a real network and leave crap like Azureus to the pirates.
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#291687 - 24/12/2006 13:48
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Luddite much? I would imagine that the P2P aspect of the service reduces costs to everyone significantly. And the fact of the matter is likely to be that the vast majority of the end users on the internet use virtually none of their upload capacity. I'm sure that they'd rather trade that capacity for lower costs.
You talk of "setting up a real network", but the costs of the BBC providing video downloads would be outrageous. Assuming that each video file is 250MB and that there might be 10,000 downloads a day, that's well over 2 TB of data. That means you'd have to have an OC-12 just for the video download bandwidth. OC-12 circuits tend to cost in the realm of $250,000 a month. That means that each of those videos would have to cost $25 just to break even on bandwidth costs. If, however, they were using their customers' bandwidth, they might be able to get by with an OC-3. OC-3 circuits cost in the neighborhood of $25,000 a month, which lowers the cost of the videos to just $2.50 in order to cover the bandwidth costs.
Sounds to me like they might be giving you a cut of the profits by reducing the cost of the items you're buying. Of course, no one's forcing you or anyone else to use their service. Feel free to not be able to get your hands on copies of the programs legally.
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Bitt Faulk
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#291688 - 24/12/2006 14:26
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Also, for the record, in the US, the prices to buy English TV productions on DVD are outrageous. I don't know what it's like in Canada. For example, the complete collection of Fawlty Towers sells for $46 at Amazon. The Young Ones is $49. That's about $4 an episode. If you look at US TV shows from the same time period on DVD, you find that the first season of, say, Taxi is available for $29, or about $1.32 an episode. And, for some reason, you can get the first season of Night Court for $8.39. That's $0.65 an episode. (This is actually remarkably cheap.) And you can forget about getting lesser-known British TV shows. Of the BBC's Top Ten Sitcoms, only the top six are available at all. You can forget less popular shows. And you can forget about classic Doctor Who. I don't know what the deal is, but not only can't you get it on DVD (except for some apparently randomly chosen episodes), but no one airs it any more, either, even BBC America, although the new series are shown both by them and by the SciFi Channel.
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Bitt Faulk
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#291689 - 24/12/2006 15:07
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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I have to side with Bruno on this one, more due to the technical aspects though. BitTorrent is still horrible about killing many peoples connections. Either the high upstream usage kills the downstream performance, or the massive amount of connections BitTorrent tries to open slows down the router. And because most every broadband connection has a much slower upstream, the majority of the people connected will download what they want, and maybe send 15% of it back out to everyone else.
Blizzard has been using BitTorrent since day one to distribute World of Warcraft patches. And it has never gone well at all. Places like Fileplanet probably like it though, since it has driven more traffic to their site as they mirror all the patches. I looked into it one day, and for Blizzard to have a 500mb per month distribution to the users over something like CacheFly or Akamai, it would cost them a maximum of 10 cents per user.
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#291690 - 24/12/2006 16:25
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
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Quote:
I looked into it one day, and for Blizzard to have a 500mb per month distribution to the users over something like CacheFly or Akamai, it would cost them a maximum of 10 cents per user.
Don't they have about 7.5 million users? That's $750,000. Or maybe I didn't understand that correctly. You didn't say how often they'd need to pay that 10 cents per user. Every month?
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Matt
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#291691 - 24/12/2006 22:04
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: Dignan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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I was calculating that based on an estimated 2 million North American users, since the 7.5 million number represents a lot of asian accounts, and most there are pay to play time cards at internet cafes. The bandwidth issue is less of a concern there.
With 2 million users x $15 a month, thats $30,000,000 in cash flow. So that 10 cents comes out to 0.6% of that. And that 10 cents is per month on 500mb of usage. Normally their patches only average maybe 100mb a month, only recently did they have a 500mb patch. The overall point here though is using companies that specialize in fast file transfers don't cost all that much in the grand scheme of things vs forcing users to deal with a peer to peer technology.
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#291692 - 25/12/2006 03:26
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
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I can see your point there. Revision3 uses Cachefly for all their stuff, and while they don't have 2 million viewers/listeners, they're probably pushing a lot more data per user (I download at least 1GB from them a month).
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Matt
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#291693 - 28/12/2006 09:33
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: Dignan]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 27/02/2004
Posts: 1913
Loc: London
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I'd just like ANY solution whereby I can access material without buying physical media, I don't really mind how the media is served (although of course a straight download service would be better).
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#291694 - 28/12/2006 13:08
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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Sopranos > 12 episodes US$100 regular or $70 Amazon. Ouch.
As Tom has pointed out, bandwidth can be sublet cheaply. With a Torrent methodology, I might download 2 or 3 few episodes which might take a day or more and then be uploading them for the rest of the month or two if the client software was left running. I've never experienced any torrent connection that was as fast as a dedicated high speed download server (that's well balanced).
Have prices been published yet for this new download service? Maybe my initial point was moot if uploaders earn back download credits or something.
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#291695 - 28/12/2006 18:09
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: hybrid8]
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addict
Registered: 01/03/2002
Posts: 599
Loc: Florida
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Quote:
Sopranos > 12 episodes US$100 regular or $70 Amazon. Ouch.
As Tom has pointed out, bandwidth can be sublet cheaply. With a Torrent methodology, I might download 2 or 3 few episodes which might take a day or more and then be uploading them for the rest of the month or two if the client software was left running. I've never experienced any torrent connection that was as fast as a dedicated high speed download server (that's well balanced).
Have prices been published yet for this new download service? Maybe my initial point was moot if uploaders earn back download credits or something.
The only service that downloads faster than torrents for me is news even Microsoft isn't faster. I almost always get around the max speed of my cable modem when using Azureus (News is ALWAYS maxed out). The key to getting good speed with torrents is to never max out your upstream, if you do then the downstream will suffer.
Here is a speed test I did a few weeks ago:
http://www.dslreports.com/im/20022939/21526.png
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Chad
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#291696 - 28/12/2006 19:47
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: Attack]
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veteran
Registered: 21/03/2002
Posts: 1424
Loc: MA but Irish born
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We seem to have a nice pipe at work... http://www.dslreports.com/im/20679915/56117.pngI'll test my FIOS tonight to compare. And as to stay on topic in Off Topic, "I've always had slow down loads from Microsoft, I always just put it down to them just not been able to meet the demand & every script kiddie DOSing them". edit: Verizon 5 Mbps/2 Mbps FIOS in MA http://www.dslreports.com/im/20687444/41.png
Edited by Phoenix42 (28/12/2006 22:35)
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#291697 - 28/12/2006 20:26
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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Quote:
...the fact of the matter is likely to be that the vast majority of the end users on the internet use virtually none of their upload capacity. I'm sure that they'd rather trade that capacity for lower costs.
Unfortunately, in the UK at least, almost all broadband users have a usage limit that includes uploads as well as downloads in the same limit. It doesn't make any sense of course, but that is the situation.
An uninformed broadband user in the UK would easily hit their monthly usage limit with their P2P uploads if they started using a system like this.
There are fortunately more sensible ISPs as well, my ISP has unlimited uploads and downloads outside of peak hours and unlimited uploads at all times. Unfortunately most ISPs in the UK are not like this.
Perhaps this is why this service is being launched in the US and not the UK ?
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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday
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#291698 - 29/12/2006 09:21
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: andy]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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Which ISP are you using? I'm beginning to get hacked off with BT so fancy a change:-)
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#291699 - 29/12/2006 11:56
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: frog51]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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A&A http://aaisp.net/Not cheap, but I highly recommend them to anyone with a technical bent. They are the fairest ISP I know, with no hidden or shrouded limits or costs. Everything is spelled out in black and white up front. They also have the most detailed and pro-active line monitoring ever, take a look at the status pages for my line: http://www.norman.cx/photos/links/aa/main.cgi.htmhttp://www.norman.cx/photos/links/aa/usage.cgi.htm
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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday
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#291700 - 29/12/2006 12:00
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: andy]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 27/02/2004
Posts: 1913
Loc: London
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They near enough always have a live techie answer their support line in a reasonable time, talked me through my setup issues on several lines no hassles so far. Thanks Andy
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#291701 - 29/12/2006 12:05
Now that is a lot of TV
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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Looking at my status pages I've just calculated my usage over the last 12 months. 753 gigabytes up, 513 gigabytes down Blimey, that is a lot of TV 
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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday
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#291702 - 30/12/2006 08:51
Re: Now that is a lot of TV
[Re: andy]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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Thanks - I might just have to give them a call next week to see how they stack up.
I have another option, which is the 2Mb deal Sky can give me for free. Problem is - it's Sky, and I have always had hassles with them.
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#291703 - 31/12/2006 05:54
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: wfaulk]
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Quote:
Luddite much? I would imagine that the P2P aspect of the service reduces costs to everyone significantly. And the fact of the matter is likely to be that the vast majority of the end users on the internet use virtually none of their upload capacity. I'm sure that they'd rather trade that capacity for lower costs.
You talk of "setting up a real network", but the costs of the BBC providing video downloads would be outrageous. Assuming that each video file is 250MB and that there might be 10,000 downloads a day, that's well over 2 TB of data. That means you'd have to have an OC-12 just for the video download bandwidth. OC-12 circuits tend to cost in the realm of $250,000 a month. That means that each of those videos would have to cost $25 just to break even on bandwidth costs. If, however, they were using their customers' bandwidth, they might be able to get by with an OC-3. OC-3 circuits cost in the neighborhood of $25,000 a month, which lowers the cost of the videos to just $2.50 in order to cover the bandwidth costs.
Sounds to me like they might be giving you a cut of the profits by reducing the cost of the items you're buying. Of course, no one's forcing you or anyone else to use their service. Feel free to not be able to get your hands on copies of the programs legally.
Check your math, Bitt. 10,000 downloads per day at $25 each would be $7.5 million per month. That's more than enough to cover bandwidth costs.
If youtube can do it for free videos, then I'm sure they can do it for purchased videos.
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#291704 - 31/12/2006 09:49
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: ]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2489
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Quote:
If youtube can do it for free videos, then I'm sure they can do it for purchased videos.
You seen the file size (in bytes and time) limits on You Tube videos? If I were paying I'd want MUCH better quality than You Tube currently offers.
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#291705 - 31/12/2006 09:54
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: ]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2489
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Remember theres other costs involved too Billy. Although there's a maths error, I think Bitt's point was more that people simply won't pay $25 to download something, but are more likely to pay $2.50, making P2P more appealing to all involved.
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#291706 - 02/01/2007 13:55
Re: BBC & P2P
[Re: ]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Quote:
Check your math, Bitt.
Oops.
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Bitt Faulk
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