peercasting

[seymour]

Last year, arisen graciously shoutcast the audio feed from a number of races, and I have to say as a poor american with no options for watching the race, it was the next best thing. Unfortunately, I think the feed was pretty popular, and arisen didn't have quite the bandwidth available for all those interested.

This year, I thought I'd suggest something different. I ran across a program, peercast, at http://www.peercast.org The obvious benefit is that rather than depending on one person's bandwidth to distribute, we could use everyone's.

Of course, the key dependencies are that someone still has to broadcast the initial feed (I'm not sure how arisen did it), and everyone who wants to contribute bandwidth will have to download the program. Being a student, I think I have a pretty good chunk of bandwidth to contribute, but no options on campus for watching the race.

I thought I'd post this a little early to see what people thought and if this is at all feasible to organize. I felt like arisen put forth a noble effort last year, but as a community we can do even better.

[sid]

Last year, arisen graciously shoutcast the audio feed from a number of races, and I have to say as a poor american with no options for watching the race, it was the next best thing. Unfortunately, I think the feed was pretty popular, and arisen didn't have quite the bandwidth available for all those interested.

This year, I thought I'd suggest something different. I ran across a program, peercast, at http://www.peercast.org The obvious benefit is that rather than depending on one person's bandwidth to distribute, we could use everyone's.

Of course, the key dependencies are that someone still has to broadcast the initial feed (I'm not sure how arisen did it), and everyone who wants to contribute bandwidth will have to download the program. Being a student, I think I have a pretty good chunk of bandwidth to contribute, but no options on campus for watching the race.

I thought I'd post this a little early to see what people thought and if this is at all feasible to organize. I felt like arisen put forth a noble effort last year, but as a community we can do even better.

so how are we going to make this work

we need more people ... anyone in?

[sharkie17]

seymour, you dont get Speed channel in Penn?

[seymour]

I'm at a university here, and there are a discrete number of channels on the cable service: speed channel is not amongst them. I know I can't be the only one in that position.

Last year, I think the interest died down because demand exceeded capability. With the peercasting, I bet we can turn this into a fairly large community. Someone just needs to be generous enough to start the feed.

[sharkie17]

when i was at a university, i would go to my friends bar and watch F1 races... (he had DirectTV). or any satellite should carry them... If you want to watch it bad enough, you can... (and watching real cars beats hearing them anyday)

[sid]

alright i dont know how many people know this but
you have a lot of online streams for formula 1 most from cctv in china but still decent quality ones.

i will pm you one.

[seymour]

There aren't any bars around here that show f1, and besides, half the races are at 5 in the morning. I can roll out of bed, to follow along, but that's about it.

I agree with you sharkie, if I wanted to watch it bad enough, I could, but its not my life's sole mission. I would like for it to be fairly easy and convenient for me to follow along, not a biweekly hassle.

Thanks for the link, Sid, I'll let you know if it works out.

[seymour]

This site you sent me is a huge waste, Sid. The site doesn't work at all. I can't even reach it. Looks like its following along with the live timing for me.

[seymour]

As I'm confronted again with following along with live timing at 2 in the morning, I though I'd post here again to see if anybody is interested in peercasting an audio feed.