Canada’s public television broadcaster CBC has announced that they will be releasing the upcoming TV show “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” for free via torrents. The move marks the first time a North American broadcaster will use the very popular filesharing protocol.
Although not completely confirmed, early reports show that the TV show will be published the day after the show airs on TV, DRM-free and in HD. Despite being the only North American broadcaster to have the idea, European broadcaster, especially the BBC are working on ways to distribute their content online via torrents. Torrent distribution would cut costs substantially.
Different studies have shown that approximately 50 percent of all BitTorrent downloads are TV-shows and that some hit shows such as “Heroes” can see up to 10 million downloads per new episode so it should become clear to broadcasters that torrents are a great way to get a show distributed. The only question is how to make it a profitable market.
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DreamStream has announced they have signed a deal to encrypt Royal Digital Media’s new optical media format, a competitor to Blu-ray.
The company uses military strength encryption and says the protection will be used on commercial motion picture discs.
“DreamStream and RDM’s technologies align perfectly, as they both rest exponentially beyond the standards currently being employed,” added DreamStream’s Chief Development Officer Ulf Diebel.
The protection used will be 2,048-bit encryption. In comparison, Blu-ray uses 128-bit.
RDM’s new HD media offers storage capacity of 100GB per disc, a notable upgrade from Blu-ray’s 50GB. The company says their discs can also offer display qualities higher than 1080p.
“RDM’s format will transform perceptions of high-definition,” said Diebel. “RDM’s system is able to display the next generation of high-definition: 1920p. With this advancement in technology, true digital cinema will soon be a widespread reality.”
A single disc can hold about 4 hours of 1920p resolution video, added the company.
The RDM systems are based on red laser technology, which is much cheaper than Blu-ray’s blue laser technology and therefore players and discs are expected to be cheaper.
“The retail prices for RDM’s players and discs are expected to equal those of the traditional DVD format, greatly undercutting Blu-ray,” said Diebel.
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Rumors have begun circulating that eBay is actively looking to offload Skype and that search engine giant Google is a willing buyer.
Skype, which was purchased by the auction company in 2005 for $3.1 billion USD, has not shown eBay the growth it expected and now it seems the company would rather get rid of it then continue to try to turn a profit. For fiscal 2007, the VoIP service recorded a decent sized loss which led to the ousting of CEO Niklas Zennstrom.
It is not sure whether Google wants a partnership or to purchase the company, but both eBay and Google refused comment for the time being.
More information as it becomes available.
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