Earlier this year Apple pushes for and gets removal of DRM (digital rights management) from music and video downloads on Itunes. Just as Bit Torrent goes head to head with Itunes on video downloads.
In February Bit Torrent Inc, the internet company founded by Bram Cohen opened it’s new entertainment web site.
For those who don’t know about Bit Torrent yet, it is a protocol, that can be used free of charge to download large files quickly over the internet using very little band width, It was invented by Bram Cohen. (to learn about bit torrent and how it works go to see the resources box at the end of this article)
Last year Cohen’s company entered into agreements with several movie companies among them Paramount, Warner Brothers, MGM,20th Century Fox and MTV networks. This was the ground work for them to build their business model for a broad market video download service. MTV is a key company because of it’s market demographics.
Apple was quick to follow suit and made it’s own agreements with various movie companies.
This latest effort by Bit Torrent will offer a strong competition to Apple’s Itunes as well as other movie download sites, such as ,Walmart and don‘t forget DirectTV and cable on demand services.
What Bit Torrent offers is rental downloads, purchase downloads and some free downloads. It also offers an opportunity for you to publish your own torrents. Very attractive to new producers of video content. This appears to be a move to create a home for original content providers at the Bit Torrent web site.
You might say that is all well and good but how do I watch the content on my big screen TV? Good question.
Two months ago Bit Torrent announced it’s partnership with the company Netgear , which has developed a small inexpensive interface cable box to use to transfer your movies, video and other content from your computer to your TV. Hmm…. sounds a lot like Apple TV.
In an interview on CNBC May 3, 2007 Patrick Lo, the chief executive of Netgear said that Netgear’s plan is to use it’s wireless networks in the home to drive content from the internet to the home TV and make everyone’s home a wireless network.
Not so fast Bit Torrent; last week Apple counters with , what else, video on demand.
London’s financial Times wrote an article indicating that Apple would be offering a video on demand download service in the Fall. And the downloads would be rentals that would cost $2.99. These rental downloads would be good for thirty days and could be shared on one or more of Apple’s devices, Apple TV, iphone or ipod.
This latest move by Apple seems to have placed Apple and Bit Torrent in direct competition with all other video on demand services, which include Amazon’s service, Netflix service and the cable and direct TV companies services.
The gamble would appear to be for Apple and Bit Torrent to drive these other services to a point where they are marginal players and for one of them, that is Bit Torrent or Apple to emerge as the consumer favorite for video and internet content downloads and streaming wirelessly.
A question arises; where is Microsoft in all this? Are they missing the boat again? Or just waiting for the dust to clear?
Hollywood is placing bets on as many power players as it can; hence the agreements with both Bit Torrent and Apple waiting to see who comes out on top.
