There’s a review at LifeHacker that says that “if you dig the idea of subscribing to, and downloading, HD-quality videos of your favorite NBC shows, it’s not a bad way of getting them guilt-free”.

Some of the cooler comments:

• “Hell yes! This is *exactly* the kind of thing I’ve been looking for - my internet connection is still too (slow) in the evenings to reliably stream video.” - DukeMan330
• “… as far as I know, this is the first attempt to basically offer “legal copyrighted material torrenting.” I actually applaud NBC for giving it a go. Especially since Fox should be next in line (if we’re sticking with the idea that this is like Hulu.)” - Joe.Glass
• “Are you kidding? how can this be compared to the stuttering hulu experience ? sure, if you’re into watching VHS quality video anytime other than the evening and have a reliable high speed connection that would work. The fact that I can subscribe to a show and get 720p episodes downloaded in the background is ground breaking. The ads are bearable and the offline viewing is a great plus for a road warrior like me. The previous version had a lot of issues but it seems they got it right this time. I’m really hoping other networks will follow.” - Keith Zoso

While you may know that we’ve been helping companies such as NBC with their video downloads, you may not know that we’ve also been working with world-class game companies to help them deliver their games reliably and efficiently to their customers worldwide. We’re very proud to be able to share with you several games from our first two such partners, Nexon and Acclaim.

If you’d like to take a look at Pando’s game downloader in action:

Nexon: 

• MapleStory 
• Audition 
• Mabinogi 
• Combat Arms 

Acclaim: 

• TrackMania 
• Dance 
• Bots 
• 9 Dragons 
• 2 Moons 

This second annual DCIA “Conference within CES” is scheduled for January 7th in Las Vegas, NV in conjunction with the 2009 CES International trade show. So if you’re coming to CES, we encourage you to register for P2P Media Summit as well, or to let me know so that we can meet up!

“We are very pleased to announce that P4P Working Group (P4PWG) Co-Chairs Laird Popkin of Pando Networks and Doug Pasko of Verizon Communications … will be our luncheon speakers” said DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty, who continued “our keynotes now include Robert Levitan, CEO, Pando Networks”.

For details, see the P2P Media Summit LV agenda.

This morning Pando has released more information about the P4P test results for AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. I think that it really means something that this effort is strongly supported by so many major ISPs. Here are some quotes:

Pando Networks CTO and P4PWG Co-Chair Laird Popkin said, “This round of trials also introduced a new capability of P4P, extending the protocol to optimize traffic among ISPs. This allows ISPs, for example, to direct P2P applications to use private ISP-to-ISP connections instead of expensive transit across the general Internet, further improving delivery performance and reducing delivery cost.”

DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty added, “The improvement in results achieved by Pando Networks, Yale University, and a larger number of participating ISPs in this second round of P4P field trials further validates the potential value of P4P. The technology has now demonstrated tremendous benefits for cable as well as telco-based ISPs. We are excited to be moving ahead with its further development and look forward to its ultimate deployment.”

Commenting on the release of the results, executives from industry-leading ISPs indicated support for the initiative and a willingness to participate in more testing.

“The trial results demonstrate that P4P has the potential to increase network efficiencies, which ultimately could provide Internet users with a better and faster broadband experience,” said Charles Kalmanek, Vice President - Networking and Services Research, AT&T Labs. “We look forward to continuing our cooperative relationships with industry and academic partners, working together to find effective solutions for users and networks operators, and supporting their adoption.”

“Comcast believes that collaboration and engagement with the Internet community, engineers, academics and other experts is the best way to evaluate new Internet technologies like P4P,” said Barry Tishgart, VP of Internet Services for Comcast. “We’re encouraged by the results of the first P4P trial recently conducted on our cable ISP infrastructure, and we look forward to participating in additional P4P trials as we continue to optimize our network to provide the best experience for all customers.”

According to Verizon Senior Technologist Doug Pasko, Co-Chair of the P4PWG, “In this second round of P4P trials, route guidance reduced the P2P traffic entering Verizon’s networks from a previous average reduction of thirty-five percent (35%) to a reduction of more than seventy-five percent (75%). P2P traffic leaving Verizon’s networks was reduced from an average of forty-one percent (41%) to fifty-four percent (54%). This again illustrates how ISPs can operate more efficiently if traffic remains on their own networks.”

“The P4P field trials have repeatedly proven that localized P2P delivery is a ‘win-win’ for consumers, content owners and broadband network operators,” added Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks. “Pando Networks is proud to offer P4P functionality as a part of our content delivery cloud solution.”

Pando and P4P “blew away expectations” for performance and network efficiency in a recent P4P field test, showing that intelligent p2p networking can deliver data 85% faster, and reduced external transit consumption (which costs ISPs money) by 80%!

These results built on the first P4P Field Test, showing that smarter p2p networking works very well for cable operators, as well as the traditional telco’s that participated in the first P4P Field Test.

Some writeups:

• Comcast P4P Results ‘Better Than Anyone Expected’ by Ryan Lawler of Contentinople.
  
• Comcastic P4P trial shows 80% speed boost for P2P downloads by Nate Anderson of Ars Technica
  
• Comcast’s ISP Experiences In a Recent P4P Technical Trial submitted to the IETF by Comcast.

For more information about P4P, or to participate in the P4P Working Group and future testing, contact Laird Popkin.

Pando was recently featured in 50 websites you’ll wonder how you lived without: Essential sites to add to your bookmarks today.

As TechRadar put it:

“10. It’s easier to understand Pando by what it’s not: you can’t sync files, store them online or make back-ups. Instead, it’s the best site we found for sending large files by email. Instead of using attachments, you just send your recipient a Pando link. Max file size is 1GB, and there’s a video sharing version for consumers and corporate users – all free.”

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!

As Pando has worked with our partner content publishers, ISPs and CDNs, we have realized that we have become more than a p2p platform. Pando now provides a delivery platform that utilizes a wide range of delivery techniques and data sources to deliver content as rapidly and efficiently as possible. We call this strategy of utilizing peers, origin servers, CDN servers, and cache servers a Content Delivery Cloud, using a term written about by Reuven Cohen of Enomaly. We believe that this approach combines the benefits of traditional CDN performance and availability with the economics of traditional P2P delivery, and gives content publishers the control to optimize the delivery of their content in ways that have previously been unavailable.

For example, Pando allows content publishers to utilize a mixture of CDNs based on capacity, economics and geographical coverage. So if you want to use one CDN in North America, another in Europe, and another in Asia, we provide a unified platform across those CDNs. Pando can even transparently fail-over to an alternate CDN in the case of an outage, providing an even better service level than any one CDN.

We also optimize how we deliver data based on the recipient’s ISP. For example, if an ISP operates caching servers, we can work with them to utilize those caches in order to speed up delivery to consumers, while reducing delivery costs to ISPs. And if an ISP provides us with P4P guidance we can optimize our network to speed downloads by up to 2x while reducing delivery costs to the ISP.

Robert Levitan, our CEO, will be giving a keynote address at P2P & Video Conference in LA next Monday morning. If you’re in the area, we invite you to drop in and watch his presentation!

More than 4,000 readers voted on products and services in the streaming media, online video, CDN, and other categories in the 2nd annual awards competition.

Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Editor of Streaming Media magazine, noted that, “This year’s Readers’ Choice Awards presented more than 200 different products and services from more than 150 different companies from around the world,” he said. “The fact that there’s so much competition for these awards is a reflection of just how many competitive solutions are now available to consumers, enterprises, and educational institutions looking for online video solutions; the fact that more than 4,000 Streaming Media readers voted in the awards shows just how passionately they feel about the tools they’ve chosen.”

You can see Pando and the other Streaming Media Readers’ Choice award winners listed here. It really shows that the P2P delivery market has arrived when the traditional CDN category was named “Global Content Delivery Network (non P2P)”.!

Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Network “All of us on the team at Pando are very excited to have won this award. However, we are not resting on our laurels. Pando is committed to making our technology even better and making it even easier for our customers to deploy a commercial grade p2p delivery platform.”

Thanks to everyone for voting for Pando!

But you won’t have to worry about your PC waking you up when it wakes up - we leave the monitor and speakers off, so you can sleep while your PC is working.

For more information on the partnership between Pando and Intel, and to watch a slick animation that explains Intel Wake on Event, see our announcement. Click on “See how it works” to launch the animation, then click on “media on demand” to see what we can do.

Update:  there’s a good article on the Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch.