Olympics Proliferate on P2P Networks

Written by Ryan Lawler

Wednesday, August 13. 2008 at 01:10 PM EDT Post a comment

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Millions have turned to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for high-definition (HD) video from the Beijing Olympic games, despite the fact that much of the content is widely available for free online.

Just a few days after coverage of the Olympic Games began, TorrentFreak reports that a high-definition version of the Opening Ceremonies was the most popular file on P2P networks last week. So far, more than a million users have downloaded the 5GB file, with more being added every day.

Other popular Olympics videos were distributed on peer-to-peer networks, including standard definition and iPod-ready versions of the Opening Ceremonies. But quality clearly is key, as users are searching for ways to view Olympics video in HD formats.

NBC Universal has made great strides in improving the quality of video online with the launch of NBCOlympics.com. But the video is not full-screen and not HD-quality.

According to Chris Carper's The Business of Silverlight blog, NBC is using Microsoft Silverlight to serve up video streams encoded at 350 Kbits and 650 Kbits. While users have developed workarounds to adjust the size of the screen to get a bigger picture of the events, they can't change the quality of the encoding rate.

That's where file-sharing networks come in. Andy Baio at Waxy.org provides an interesting comparison of video available through Usenet and NBCOlympics.com. While the official NBC is 5MB and 500x284, a 720p HDTV video capture available on Usenet runs 15MB and is 1020x570.

Source: Waxy.org

Availability could also be key. Data collected by Wiredset CEO Mark Ghuneim shows that the strongest take-up of one copy of the HD Opening Ceremonies file comes from China, where nearly 70 percent of all downloads originate. However, Ghuneim notes that file downloads can differ based on network and demographic breakdown.

On a different torrent of the same HD video file, nearly 40 percent of downloaders come from within the U.S, where viewers can see the same content -- in lower quality -- for free through NBCOlympics.com.

Source: Mark Ghuneim