-or-
How to Make Money From BitTorrent
I was thinking about torrents in regard to the PSP. Assuming you were inclined and had the equipment and a capable internet connection, you could very easily stuff any TV show you wanted into a memory stick-sized package and watch it on the PSP at your leisure.
All you need is Videora and PSP Video 9, which will find the shows you want on the torrent sites, download them via torrent, transcode them for the PSP, and move them onto your memory stick. All you need to do is switch sticks in the morning, and you’ve got fresh video mobile every day.
The point of this PSP talk is that the technology is available for doing this today - right now. I imagine that you might even be able to do something like this with the ZVue, which is last year’s $99 tech. The TV and movie companies are falling behind technically because they’re not cashing in on this surge of interest.
Why is this a problem for us? What can they do to fix it?
Imagine: My neighbor and I watch the same TV shows and have been doing so via cable (or satellite, or whatever - it’s irrelevant). One day, my neighbor tells me that he has stopped watching TV during prime time, but he’s still catching all of the same shows I do. By recording the show on tape, DVD, or PVR? No - Via BitTorrent.
With BitTorrent, he can choose what shows he wants to watch, even those from overseas that won’t air in our country until next year, if ever. He can choose what format he wants to watch them in, be it VCD (which plays in his DVD player) or DVD or DivX, which also plays in his DVD player or on his PSP.
And so… Wow. I sign up for an elite BitTorrent site, download Videora, etc. Suddenly we’re both downloading TV shows. Why would I continue to use cable?
And as broadband becomes ubiquitous, and as more of the uncommon shows start to become available online, what need do we have for cable at all?
Cable eventually becomes a deployment method to the handful of people who are digitizing the shows in teh first place. In fact, as Verizon starts rolling out video service with their fiber lines, there will be even less need for this, since the video is via IP and wouldn’t need to be digitized, just transcoded. With that and radio-broadcast digital TV, cable TV goes the way of the dodo.
Well, as I’ve heard from time to time, where does the money come from? Currently, the money is in advertising and licensing fees. The files I’ve gotten via torrent have not included commercials. So how would any TV producer make money using torrents?
If the TV studios were smart (and they’re really not) they would dump their own files onto the ’net for torrent seeders to use. These files would contain commercials. Perhaps the commercials would appear on the sides of the full picture to make their removal more difficult. The question at that point for a packager of torrents would be whether it’s worth degrading the quality of the direct-from-source video to remove a few commercials.
Here’s a new and crazy idea…
Remember the street performer protocol? Perhaps rather than soliciting direct monetary donations, potential show viewers could be asked to watch a certain number of commercials. That the commercial was seen could be easily verified via DRM. Note that the DRM is not on the television program itself, which would be free for public consumption, but only to track a head count of those who watched the advertising.
This would put a nail in the coffin of syndication, I’m sure.
At least in this case, faithful viewers of cult shows wouldn’t have a leg to stand on when their favorite shows are cancelled. They would have a direct line to the funding of the shows by watching the advertising. In the end, it wouldn’t have to matter on how many dollars they wrote “Veronica Mars is smarter than me”, because the cash from advertising would make the budget.
What the internet needs is a couple of media pioneers to start releasing “TV” shows only on the internet. Provide a very nice support forum for the down time between shows, and get the viewers to pay for the shows by supporting the advertising from that site. Remind the viewers that the next show can’t begin until the funding is there, and that the show will simply stop when the funding dries up. Completely viewer-supported TV, but via the internet, and no telethons, just AdSense.
