BitTorrent brings its free ve streaming service to Android

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Published 27 Jan 2017

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BitTorrent has been trying to shake its image as a pirated movie purveyor for years use its peer-to-peer powers for good, now you can enjoy its free, legal, legitimate TV service right on your Android phone.

Called BitTorrent ve, the app isn’t for seeding sharing, it’s for streaming. eviously available on iOS streaming TV devices such as Apple TV FireTV, the video platform offers a wide array of programs ranging from sports to news, tech, pop culture. The shows it offers aren’t exactly mainstream, but you will find a TT channel dedicated to the popular This ek in Tech podcast network, as well as a stream of NASA TV. Additionally, the service features shows dedicated to wealth, extreme sports, electronic dance music.

The app requires a free login to begin watching, the service utilizes BitTorrent’s patented peer-to-peer live streaming protocol to eliminate latency issues. As the company explains in a blog post, “BitTorrent ve allows for large audiences to view live video with sub 10-second latency without the need for an expensive CDN or pre-provisioning. th BitTorrent ve, every viewer is also a broadcaster. This allows the video stream to remain strong for the broadcast to be as scalable as traditional Over-the-Air TV.”

bittorrent live

The BitTorrent ve app features a channel dedicated to the This ek in Tech podcast.

In our short testing, the bare-bones app seemed to live up to its claims, with streams starting immediately upon tapping a channel. Everything in the app is currently available for free, but BitTorrent has said that “subscription-based, ad-supported, y-r-View premium tiers” will follow. You can download it in the ay Store.

The story behind the story: ile the programming options it offers might not be must-see TV, BitTorrent ve is certainly an interesting application of the peer-to-peer protocol. ’ve already seen what it can do for multi-gigabyte file downloads, but applying the tech to live streaming could change the way we consume video online. Back in 2009, BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen said that his ultimate goal was to “kill off television” with his instant streaming service, while that dream might still be a long way off, the technology here is certainly impressive. th some premium partners a paid tier, BitTorrent ve could one day become the streaming service stard.