EU Invests 15M Euros in P2P TV Project

Research project called "P2P-Next" aims to create Internet TV platform of the future.

P2P-Next, a pan-European conglomerate of 21 industrial partners, media content providers and research institutions, has received a 15 million Euro grant from the European Union to to develop a Europe-wide “next-generation” internet television distribution system based on P2P technology and social interaction.

“The P2P-Next project will run over four years, and plans to conduct a large-scale technical trial of new media applications running on a wide range of consumer devices," reads a P2P-Next statement. "If successful, this ambitious project could create a platform that would enable audiences to stream and interact with live content via a PC or set top box."

"In addition, it is our intention to allow audiences to build communities around their favourite content via a fully personalized system."

Some of the program's partners include the BBC, Delft University of Technology, the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited, and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Arguably the most prominent members of the team will be individuals from the Tribler team, the open source social BitTorrent client created by scientists at the Delft University of Technology and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam to study video file sharing.

From a Tribler press release:

As the biggest P2P-Next partner (in terms of man years) we are responsible for crafting and building the next-generation of P2P technology. It will be an academically pure architecture: no central servers will be needed, combined with Bittorrent backwards compatibility. Within a year we hope to release to the public: Live Playlists (a P2P-version of RSS feeds to enable user-generated metadata), Wiki-style moderation, and a reputation system for spam-prevention plus sharing ratio enforcement.

P2P-Next's scientific director, Dr. Pouwelse from Delft University of Technology, sums up the whole purpose of the project which is to make "...near-zero cost TV broadcasting available to all Europeans." P2P technology could definitely make this dream a reality and certainly usher in a new era of citizen broadcasters in which individuals can offer alternatives to mainstream news media outlets.

Luis Rodríguez-Roselló, Head of Unit of Networked Media at the European Union, also praises the project by noting that "This ambitious project is investigating new ways to deliver video using the P2P paradigm making possible to everybody to distribute videos from anywhere to any number of people anywhere in the world."

"It will be a live trial of the future media internet we are envisioning," he continues. "Europe can be proud of having very high quality broadcasting, content and telecommunication sectors. So, I ensure that the project we are launching today will help European stakeholders to be at the frontline in pioneering the looming media revolution enabled by the internet."

Moreover, it looks like P2P will be used to televise this revolution in TV distribution.

[Via NewTeeVee]