Mark Tinka wrote:
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I know BitTorrent to work is the file is downloaded to disk, unarchived and then listed as ready to watch. That's not how it works. Several streaming BitTorrent clients specifically request blocks in order so that you can start watching immediately. Not that you need a special client, it works pretty well with the standard client as well on a well seeded torrent, as blocks are generally requested more or less in order.
It also assumes the device has all the necessary apps and codecs needed to render the file. Well, yes. Or you could just stream content that is guaranteed to be compatible with the device used.
On the other hand, BitTorrent could just make an Apple TV/PS4/PS5/Xbox/whatever-device-you-use app as well. They could, and they might even have, I forget, but there is little demand for such a thing as a centralized CDN strategy works better.
But I doubt that will work, unless someone can think up a clever way to modify BitTorrent to suit today's network architectures. Unless network topology is somehow exposed, this isn't possible. All anybody can do is use latency, IP and ASN information as a proxy.
Nothing is stopping a BitTorrent client from being selective about its peers. The current peer selection algorithm optimizes for throughput, not adjecency or topology. - Jared