Emedded Bittorent: The/A future of web video and more!
What if it were possible to embed a video, music or any kind of file, into any website, and have it load every time, without restrictions or technical limitations other than raw hardware capability.
Bittorrent has come a long way since it’s beginings as a replacement for older P2P networks like Limewire. Over the years, we’ve seen Mainline DHT become much more useful while consuming much less bandwidth, thus phasing out trackers as an absolute necessity and the addition of magnet links mean we no longer need to host torrent files anywhere.
In short, we are now at the point where being able to insert a file by URI is within our grasp. What does this mean in practical reality?
Files no longer need to exist in a set location, instead being stored by a swarm of it’s viewers but can be augmented by servers if you want. Each person who watches a video acts as a host for that video, meaning that you are no longer restricted by Youtube’s 10 minute limit, it’s resolution limit or it’s slowness on congested days. Files will stay up as long as people are interested in them (Servers can also be added via magnet link’s “as” locator parameter.), and no longer will half the videos from yesteryear 404.
Major problems faced:
- Building it in the first place: Some combination of Chrome/Chromium + MPlayer (Built in.) + LibTorrent should be enough for a proof-of-concept.
- Specifically for video: Not having people use insane codecs, encoding and subtitle formats.
- I’m not holding my breath for a single standard, hopefully WebM and H.264 will cover most video.
- Unsure whether having different video resolutions rolled into a single link (Entirely possible.) would be a good idea.
- Leaving the option in would work.
- Links you click on are no longer checked by anyone, so you have to trust the person linking you to/embedding a video.
- This is how most content on the net works, no big problem.
I hope this gives you something to think about. While you’re thinking, give the Wikiepdia article on the Magnet URI scheme a look, it’s quite fascinating.
