The problem with torrent RSS feeds
WARNING: above average geek material ahead. skip it if torrent or RSS doesn’t even register on your radar. sorry.
As noted before I am a user and even an evangelist of the Democracy player software (a recent update to 0.9.2 was released a couple of days ago and should be faster and better). One of the unique features of democracy is a totally seamless integration of a bittorrent client, meaning that your RSS feed can point either to a direct (HTTP) download of a video or to a torrent file. Democracy makes it transparent to the user. This is a great feature and is very beneficial for the content providers in that it can allow them to deliver large files without the burden of paying for all the bandwidth involved. where’s the catch? I’m concerned about the availability of older files once some time has passed. Bittorent is great for those “off the line” hot new files you want to download at the same time as everyone else, but what happens if I want to watch an old episode of TechnologyEvangelist (which is supplied in torrents)? you think someone out there is seeding a 5 min clip of a report on last years CES? So I guess torrents will always have to coexist with direct downloads. Back catalogs will always have to be available in direct download. I think this discourages people from using torrents. maybe future torrent protocols should have also a direct download option, where you can suck things straight from the tracker if 0 seeders are available or a certain time has passed.