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by fixermark 2636 days ago
Can my torrenting app stream my video, or do I have to wait for a full assembly of the pieces from torrent hosts and enough downloaded to watch it?

If the latter, torrenting is plenty cumbersome enough that if the studios are pushing movie-viewing to "Pay us money or you have to torrent it," they're winning.
2 comments
Reelin 2635 days ago
> Can my torrenting app stream my video

Yes, and this functionality has been built into many of the largest torrenting programs out-of-the-box for quite some time now. In the case of µTorrent, it was added in version 3.0 all the way back in 2010.

Obviously, how quickly the stream will buffer depends entirely on the state of the swarm. Popular items will work almost immediately, while particularly unpopular items won't be streamable at all.

Anecdotally, I have personally witnessed my (very nontechnical) friends streaming 4+ GB 1080p ...popular cat videos... that weren't available from Netflix. They did not struggle with the process in the slightest.

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radisb 2635 days ago
Pop-Corn Time would like to have a word with you
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fixermark 2635 days ago
I don't think it would, unless it begins playing within thirty seconds of the user choosing a video and provides an uninterrupted streaming experience?

Last I checked, the BitTorrent protocol didn't provide packet sorting that would allow for this behavior (by forcing the beginning of the movie's bytestream to be the first data downloaded), so my mistake if the protocol has improved and I was unaware it provided this service.

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Dylan16807 2635 days ago
The downloading client is in charge of which parts of the file it gets first. It can easily go in order.
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fixermark 2635 days ago
How easily, and how much setup is necessary? Remember, we're talking about competing with a service that doesn't even make the end-user consider whether that is a problem that needs to be solved (just plug in a credit card and off you go).
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Dylan16807 2635 days ago
A coder spent an hour changing the code, once, and now it requires zero effort for users. They never know the difference. Open popcorn time and wait for it to quickly buffer.
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