Is BitTorrent important for podcasting?

[Lance]

At this stage in the game, I don't think there is much benefit to BitTorrent seeds for podcasts because there aren't enough simultaneous downloaders.

I'm saying this strictly as a consumer of podcasts, and I'm interested in what some of you that are content providers think about this. I've tried using BT to download some of your podcasts, however there just never seem to be any seeds available. This goes against what Podcasting is about: being able to consume the content you want *when* you want it. Not when there is a seed available.

Please comment. :)

Lance

[FLEB]

I'd agree. I think mirroring tech is what's needed. If people can get their catchers to follow a 3xx redirect, it would allow some big leaps forward. Barring that, I could see putting a "mirror" element for enclosures into RSS support, either as an extension to the spec (not likely) or a namespaced element (might actually be probable).

[Cookiepuss]

Well I tend to think that BitTorrent is an important option for Podcasters.. I have written two howtos on the subject. One is a howto for using Blog Torrent (http://blogtorrent.com) to distibute podcasts:

http://www.blogtorrent.com/wiki/index.php/Podcasting_with_Blog_Torrent

The other is on setting up Blog Torrent with TorentFlux in order to seed from the same server (or other). Insuring there is always one seed available.

http://www.blogtorrent.com/wiki/index.php/Use_TorrentFlux_with_Blog_Torrent

The idea is that many people have basic hosting with limited bandwidth. So by using Blog Torrent which already has an RSS feed they can post their podcasts to it with ease. All that is required is PHP on their server (no need for mySQL). It also has the convienant option of allowing people to download a torrent without having a client already installed. So people wanting to download just one show can.

By using Blog Torrent with TorrentFlux you can insure seeding. As well as with TorrentFlux allowing multiple users it can be helpful if you have multiple people involved in your site/podcasts.

So to address the bandwidth crunch. If you have low bandwidth on your hosti. Just install TorrentFlux or some other BT client on your local computer which I assume is attached to DSL. Then keep your seeds open. Hence you do not have bandwidth limits on your DSL (most of the time). :wink:

Or if your host does not allow trackers get a DYNDNS (http://dyndns.org) address (free) and host both the tracker and your seed from your home DSL. There is also a Mac version of Blog Torrent. :D

Many of the popular clients (Nimiq, iPodder, etc) already support downloading via BitTorrent. . .so take advantage of it!