The Little Geeni

The high Steaks poker Game Has begun; Hollywood watches and waits. As Bit Torrent takes on Apple in a battle for your video downloads.

Earlier this year Apple pushes for and gets removal of DRM (digital rights management) from music and video downloads on Itunes. Just as Bit Torrent goes head to head with Itunes on video downloads.

In February Bit Torrent Inc, the internet company founded by Bram Cohen opened it’s new entertainment web site.

For those who don’t know about Bit Torrent yet, it is a protocol, that can be used free of charge to download large files quickly over the internet using very little band width, It was invented by Bram Cohen. (to learn about bit torrent and how it works go to see the resources box at the end of this article)

Last year Cohen’s company entered into agreements with several movie companies among them Paramount, Warner Brothers, MGM,20th Century Fox and MTV networks. This was the ground work for them to build their business model for a broad market video download service. MTV is a key company because of it’s market demographics.

Apple was quick to follow suit and made it’s own agreements with various movie companies.

This latest effort by Bit Torrent will offer a strong competition to Apple’s Itunes as well as other movie download sites, such as ,Walmart and don’t forget DirectTV and cable on demand services.

What Bit Torrent offers is rental downloads, purchase downloads and some free downloads. It also offers an opportunity for you to publish your own torrents. Very attractive to new producers of video content. This appears to be a move to create a home for original content providers at the Bit Torrent web site.

You might say that is all well and good but how do I watch the content on my big screen TV? Good question.

Two months ago Bit Torrent announced it’s partnership with the company Netgear , which has developed a small inexpensive interface cable box to use to transfer your movies, video and other content from your computer to your TV. Hmm…. sounds a lot like Apple TV.

In an interview on CNBC May 3, 2007 Patrick Lo, the chief executive of Netgear said that Netgear’s plan is to use it’s wireless networks in the home to drive content from the internet to the home TV and make everyone’s home a wireless network.

Not so fast Bit Torrent; last week Apple counters with , what else, video on demand.

London’s financial Times wrote an article indicating that Apple would be offering a video on demand download service in the Fall. And the downloads would be rentals that would cost $2.99. These rental downloads would be good for thirty days and could be shared on one or more of Apple’s devices, Apple TV, iphone or ipod.

This latest move by Apple seems to have placed Apple and Bit Torrent in direct competition with all other video on demand services, which include Amazon’s service, Netflix service and the cable and direct TV companies services.

The gamble would appear to be for Apple and Bit Torrent to drive these other services to a point where they are marginal players and for one of them, that is Bit Torrent or Apple to emerge as the consumer favorite for video and internet content downloads and streaming wirelessly.

A question arises; where is Microsoft in all this? Are they missing the boat again? Or just waiting for the dust to clear?

Hollywood is placing bets on as many power players as it can; hence the agreements with both Bit Torrent and Apple waiting to see who comes out on top.

.htaccess Apple, Battle, Downloads, Torrent, Video

Torrent download and uploading is a peer to peer technology that allows millions of users from all over the world to share files. In simpler terms, it is a peer to peer file sharing technology. You can use this technology to share all kinds of files on the Internet, even without the use of a browser. Here is a quick introduction of how the technology works.

What is a torrent?

File sharing using torrent software requires files to be first converted into torrents. Torrents are actually smaller files that are created from the original source file. For example, you may have a full length movie you want to share on a torrent network. But this file is too big. So you convert the file into torrents (smaller files), so that you can share them with other users on the network.

How sharing works.

Torrent sharing has been around for many years now. It’s not a new technology, but the concept still puzzles some internet users. Here is how the sharing works.

Once the files have been converted into torrents, they reside on the user computer. The folders are specially selected folders with permission given to the torrent software to share the files within that folder. Only files that are within these shared folders are visible to other users on the network.

If you want to look for a specific file to download, you will need to go to a torrent search engine, and make a keyword search. You may then click on a search result, and the download will commence immediately. The search engines will also list other important information such as how many users are seeding the files. The more seeds available, the more reliable, and the faster the download.

A seed is when a user complete the entire download for a particular file. That user, becomes a seed, and he or she now shares the file with other users. That’s how file sharing works on a torrent network. It’s based on the basic concept of reciprocity.

Download speeds are affected by several variables.

Firstly, your torrent configurations may be something to do with your download speed. You may need someone with experience to help you with the configurations. Or you may want to try out different settings to see what works best. Usually, you can get download speeds of between 100kbs to 200kbs. That’s a speed comparable to some of the fastest servers on the Internet!

Secondly, the number of seeds available also influence the download speed. If the file is very popular, and many people are sharing the same file, you will get a much faster download speed.

Finally, if you really want a boost to your download speed, you can consider installing special software like Torrent Booster. Such software helps you to achieve download speeds that you have never experienced before.

.htaccess Downloads, speed, Torrent