ZDNet shows Zattoo some love

I've never had a chance to see Zattoo's P2P live TV-streamer, myself (blocked based on IP geolocation), but this brief ZDNet review is quite enthusiastic, and seems to indicate they're already getting fair efficiency out of P2P. Note also the author's comment (in the comments, after the post itself) on Zattoo's emerging advertising model.

Coming soon to a game console near you!

Forbes reports that Netflix is en route to providing VOD not just on the PC, but also on several partners' entertainment devices, and suggests that these devices will be set-top boxes, Blu-ray players(?!), and game consoles. All this is of course in aid of infiltrating the living room and bridging the gap between Internet connections and users' TV screens.

Bandwidth hogging now blamed on video streamed over HTTP, not on P2P

Gizmodo reports that most Internet traffic (and especially peak-time traffic) is HTTP-based video streaming a la YouTube, and gives some more numbers and context. P2P traffic accounts for just 20% of the total. Of course, most bandwidth consumption is limited to a small fraction of the users. Interesting...

This is all based on data from a not-quite-disinterested maker of traffic-shaping devices, so take this with a grain of salt.

Vuze posts data on ISP throttling using forged reset packets

It was recently shown (and posted here) that at least some ISPs (well, Comcast) forge reset packets from legitimate connections, in order to actively degrade the performance of BitTorrent and possibly other out-of-favour P2P protocols. Such throttling is perceived as considerably more aggressive than simply denying some applications more bandwidth.

From all the way across the hall, loyal reader Daniel L. points out this recently posted report on P2P-maker Vuze's wide survey, intended to measure this phenomenon. The evidence seems pretty damning (for many listed ISPs), although not quite "smoking gun" quality.

Comcast's "P2P Bill of Rights"

Comcast is promoting a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities"; which they are drafting with other interested parties. Presumably, this continues their recent "playing nice with P2P" strategy, and since they also stress the importance of legal file-sharing, could signal the importance of "playing nice with content owners".

More coverage from AP.

Livestation going public

Livestation is going public at the NAB annual event, and releasing just a little extra information.

P2P filtering now a mature business

This report has details of a comparative survey of P2P filtering systems (for those ISPs intent on the shaping/evading "arms race" with P2P developers). There are no technical details to speak of, but it certainly seems to be an area with many players, presumably some demand, and effective products.

Adobe Media Player launched

Adobe Media Player has been launched. It is yet another application to download and view video files, but appears to come with all the frills you'd expect (especially DVR / podcast functionality), considerable partner content to get things going, and DRM / advertising / viewership-tracking to appeal to content owners intent on turning a buck.

BBC's iPlayer popularity leads to sour relations with ISPs

British ISPs and the BBC have been making rather heated comments following the realisation that the Beeb's popular iPlayer P2P player provides a service at the expense of increased throughput on the ISPs' networks.

The BBC News site has more on this.

See also: BBC wants to build its own CDN

The business of the video-streaming business

MSNBC / BusinessWeek have a fairly interesting review of the business and businesses (but not the technology) of video-streaming on the Net. There's no news there, and the introduction is very basic, but they do give an idea of what (some) big businesses are doing on the internet TV front.

Comcast now shaping all internet traffic

Researchers at the University of Colorado have posted evidence that US ISP Comcast is shaping all internet traffic (web browsing included) by forging TCP reset packets. This may well be their promised "more protocol-neutral" shaping, following the outcry over recent BitTorrent-specific shaping.

PeerApp provides ISPs with P2P caching systems

The Jerusalem Post has a very non-tech article on PeerApp, an Israeli company which provides ISPs with systems to cache popular files for P2P downloads inside their networks. The company's website has a few more details; apparently, they sell systems to ISPs, which cache locally the files P2P programs request, and then redistribute them to subsequent requesting peers. Their products support a number of popular P2P file-sharing protocols, and intervene "transparently" (so they say) in application-level communications.

Binkx launches P2P VOD player

Blinkx have launched bbtv, a P2P-based video-on-demand player. Blinkx are (were?) primarily a video-search company, with speech-to-text technology and capabilities to search inside video by text. Their new video player is supposed to build on that by letting the user connect video content with relevant web content. TechCrunch talked to their CEO.

last100 sums up Internet TV in 2007

last100 has a summary of the main Internet TV stories they carried in 2007.