Broadcatching

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Broadcatching is the downloading of digital content that has been made available over the Internet using RSS syndication.

The general idea is to use an automated mechanism to aggregate various web feeds and download content for viewing or presentation purposes.

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[edit] History of broadcatching

The term 'broadcatch' was originally coined by Fen Labalme in 1983. [1] It was used to describe the concept of an automated agent that could aggregate and filter content from multiple sources for presentation to an individual user.

In December of 2003, the term broadcatching was used by Steve Gillmor to describe the combination of RSS and BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing as a method for subscribing to an ongoing series of media files from a website. The combination of these technologies allows a computer connected to the Internet to act like a digital video recorder (DVR) such as TiVo connected to cable.

Despite ample discussion, one of the first practical applications of this idea has only surfaced recently. Programmer Andrew Grumet has announced the release of a beta version of an RSS and BitTorrent integration tool for Radio Userland's news aggregator, available here.

Today, RSS and BitTorrent based broadcatching provides a web based distribution channel capable of delivering broadcast media to a large group of consumers at a low cost. BitTorrent provides the low cost method for distributing large files to a large group, and RSS enables a website to easily provide a subscription to a series of BitTorrent files.

[edit] Uses of broadcatching

Although broadcatching can be classified as a method independent of technology and implementation, today broadcatching finds much use with Internet television and Internet radio (also called podcasting or IPradio).

Broadcatching is often used in situations where multicasting may be used, but is cost prohibitive.

Today, most broadcatching is done using RSS and BitTorrent technology.

[edit] Broadcatching of copyrighted television broadcasts

Perhaps the most popular use of broadcatching is using a BitTorrent client with inbuilt RSS support (such as uTorrent or Azureus, using a plugin) to automatically download television episodes as they are 'released' - internet users capture the broadcast as it is transmitted, then compress it (typically after removing advertisements) and send it on to others.

While this is not legal in most countries, the practice has become quite popular, particularly in countries such as Australia, where television programmes tend to be aired more than six months after US broadcasts, if at all.

As of 2006, there has been no legal action taken against sharers of TV episodes (compare to distribution of copyrighted movies and music, which the MPAA and RIAA have taken a strong stance against).

[edit] Broadcatching Clients

[edit] Broadcatching Feeds

  • The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay is known in the online file sharing community as one of the more prominent websites which distributes torrents that point to copyrighted material.
  • X Hollywood aggregates RSS feeds from BitTorrent sites.
  • KedoraTV a program guide with shows distributed with RSS. Offline.
  • VJTorrents is a free RSS Video feed of VJ Mixes performed and recorded live. Went offline May 1, 2006
  • tvRSS is a torrent-based broadcatching website, that provides RSS feeds for EZTV and VTV.
  • [2] OfflineTV is a project to create an internet distribution channel for alternative news videos, relying on BitTorrent and RSS technologies.
  • Electricsheep.org - Electric Sheep now offers a torrent feed to download members of its flock.
  • Torrent Locomotive The site allows the user to perform a custom search and have the results in either viewable format or in RSS. In addition, predefined RSS feed are available for most recent torrent, most popular torrents and so on.
  • BT-Chat BT-Chat hosts torrents from EZTV, VTV, SoS, and other release groups. Other torrents are also hosted there. The site has RSS feed functionality.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
BitTorrent (category)
Companies   BitTorrent, Inc.
Prominent individuals
Technology   Tracker • Client • Super-seeding • Peer exchange • Broadcatching (BT RSS List)
Prominent clients (category)
Prominent sites (category)   LokiTorrent • Suprnova.org • The Pirate Bay • AnimeSuki • Demonoid • Mininova • isoHunt • TorrentSpy • Empornium • UKNova
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