A European consortium of 21 partners made up of broadcasters and research institutions has received a grant of 19 million euros from the European Union to research new forms of Internet TV as part of the P2P-Next project.
The project will explore peer-to-peer (P2P) applications over the next four years, aiming to develop a ''next generation'' Internet TV distribution system based on P2P and social interaction.
The platform used will be Tribler, a core technology developed by Delft University of Technology (Holland), and the solutions developed will be provided as open source software over the initiative's website, in order to encourage the emergence of new business models. The technology also has the potential to be used by Video On Demand (VOD) services, with plans in place to test the system for major broadcasting events on a wide range of consumer devices.
P2P-Next will address a number of outstanding questions related to content delivery over the internet, including technical, legal, regulatory, security, business and commercial issues.
P2P technology provides an alternative to the traditional client/server architecture of computer networks in that each participating computer, referred to as a peer, functions as both a client and a server for a given application. A P2P network, which uses the existing broadband networks, enables the sharing of content files or streams with audio, video and data content.
