Though the studios just enlisted AT&T to go after their file-sharing customers and Azureus is being sued in France, I wonder if BitTorrent has some legitimate value for the content owners/creators. (Sure, BT can be used to share non-copyrighted media – but let’s be serious.)
Here’s the situation: My buddy Jason told me to check out Traveler, so I set up a Season Pass on TiVo. Only problem was, the third episode was airing and TiVo didn’t find any repeats of the earlier shows. Now what? I visit ABC.com and discover they have the first and third episode available for web streaming, but they’re missing the second (and now the fourth). Considering Traveler is a serial, I can’t miss any episodes. So off I go to pay the iTunes tax of $2/show only to discover they don’t offer it. Xbox 360 Video Marketplace? Microsoft doesn’t have a deal with ABC. All I (and ABC) am left with is BitTorrent – I downloaded the still-buggy FoxTorrent and headed off to The Pirate Bay. And guess what… BitTorrent helped make me into a live ABC television viewer. Not to mention I’m now pitching their show to others. Will it be enough to save Traveler?
In order, here’s how I watched the first four episodes:
- ABC.com – The interface can be a bit tedious at times, but hey it’s free and works on Macs.
- Xbox Media Center (XBMC) – The Xvid download looked nice on my HDTV.
- TiVo Series3 – Timeshifted HD.
- ABC – The series is so good, I’ll watch it live going forward.