Dump the TV set, watch the web instead - tech - 03 March 2007 - New Scientist Tech

WATCHING programmes on your television set is so last century.

Television studios are increasingly using the net to transmit their programmes to viewers on demand.

While this is fine when a relatively small number of people are downloading files at different times, if the internet were to transmit live television broadcasts to millions of viewers simultaneously, the sudden demand for bandwidth could create a huge bottleneck.

Now a British company has developed a way to send live video to millions of computers at once without overloading the web. The system, called the Live Delivery Network, will be launched next month by London-based firm Skinkers. It uses Pastry, a peer-to-peer distribution tool developed by Microsoft to transmit the broadcasts. This means every user who receives the broadcast also passes parts of the file on to other users. In this way live video feeds, which eat up bandwidth, can be distributed to millions of users without putting impossible demands on a central server.