Peercast - Multicasting away
Peercast catched my attention some time ago. Its an open source application (GNU) that enables peer to peer streaming. Yes the bittorrent/Gnutella way of streaming. Its simple: You make an Icecast/Shoutcast compatible stream and use peercast as relay. Then someone listens to your stream and ad hoc you have another relay to your stream. The more users listening the more relays available and in the end you are able to send out ONE good stream (over lousy DSl 128k) and all people out there get the good quality.
There is now a mac version available and its so easy that you can listen instantly (and relaying - always!). There is no need for big ass server boxes to control your own radio stations.
And it does video too but the problem only NVS or WMV (that is crappy windows media). No RTSP stream yet (real/quicktime) but they are planning on releasing a rtsp capable version soon.
The concept is great, since the internet companies can not figure out how to implement multicast on a grand scale this could come to the home TV network stations owners saviour.
