WIRED publishes an article that does a good job of summarizing the potentials of RSS + BitTorrent (Speed Meets Feed in Download Tool):
A demo publishing system launched Friday by a popular programmer and blogger merges two of this season's hottest tech fads -- RSS news syndication and BitTorrent file sharing -- to create a cheap publishing system for what its author calls "big media objects." The hybrid system is meant to eliminate both the publisher's need for fat bandwidth, and the consumer's need to wait through a grueling download.
The author of the WIRED article, Paul Boutin writes on his blog that "Those of you who remember Microsoft Active Channels and Netscape Whatever it Was Called, take note" (RSS + BitTorrent = ?). There are definitely similarities between broadcatching and MS Active Channels, but the differences are more significant. Broadcatching gets the whole channel concept right.
The most important difference is that an Active Channel provider has to provide all the bandwidth for the content they are sending. For large media objects this can quickly become rather expensive, relegating music or video channels to those who can afford substantial bandwidth (such as large media companies). In comparison, BitTorrent is specifically designed to share bandwidth costs for making large media objects available. RSS announcement of the availability increases the liklihood of more simultaneous users, thus decreasing the bandwidth costs of the seeder substantially. This means that anyone's content can be broadcatched, not just those of major media companies.
The main problem for Active Channels, however, was that there were few tools for ordinary folk to use to create their own channel. Sure, anyone could create a channel, but there was no blog software that made it easy to publish channels automatically. Consequently, Active Channels were dominated by the major media companies, who didn't necessarily use any standard format for sending content to users nor did they necessarily take user needs into account (such as not sending so many ads). One user feature that was definitely lacking was the concept of an aggregator. Switching between channels was more akin to clicking on a bookmark than looking at a list of feeds (as in a news aggregator) to see what has been updated. Generally, Active Channels meant that bookmarked webpages could have more annoying "interactive! (tm)" content.
In related news, Grumet has written up more about his implementation of broadcatching here: Experimenting with BitTorrent and RSS 2.0. In his description of the initial implementation, he has a very clear depiction of why this is darn neat:
What makes this interesting
First, RSS and BitTorrent complement each other naturally. RSS was designed to report freshly available content, which is exactly where BitTorrent shines. RSS 2.0 enclosures were designed to automate the download process that BitTorrent optimizes.
Second, combining the two should reduce the barrier to entry for small broadcasters. While not a new idea, video blogging has always borne a bandwidth cost. Combining BitTorrent's cost savings with widely available RSS emitting tools should, for example, make it possible for a small group of motivated people across the world to create their own news channel.
Simon Carless of Slashdot has a short article on the O'Reilly Network touting his work with Andrew Grumet on making broadcatching real by making RSS+BitTorrent feeds available at LegalTorrents (RSS and BitTorrent, Sitting in a Tree...). He has some valuable notes for others interested in joining the revolution.
Map the Way has this to say (Combining RSS and BitTorrent What Andrew Grumet has done!):
With modern production tools, the biggest problem for amateur and professional moviemakers is no longer producing video, but delivering it to the intended audience.
Trevor F Smith wonders about the serendipity of it all (Small screen, big net):
[Is it] a coincidence that the morning after I ordered a TV tuner for our iMac that my RSS daily update revealed a cross-blog conversation about RSS, bittorrent, and PVRs combining to create a nice web of user contributed video feeds[?]
Steve Gillmor, one of the earliest proponents of RSS+BitTorrent (BitTorrent and RSS Create Disruptive Revolution) expresses his surprise that RSS aggregators is as widely adopted within Microsoft as it is (about 15%) (Your Winnings, Sir). As usual, he has some perceptive things to say about the capabilities of RSS:
This [ubiquity of small consumable, searchable XHTML fragments] runs directly counter to Microsoft's preservation of Word document formats by European and New Zealand patents. It explains why there's still no InfoPath freely redistributable runtime--you gotta buy a ticket for enterprise workflow and form routing--and why Microsoft doesn't want to seed a poor-man's BizTalk server around RSS alerts. And let's not forget RSS/BitTorrent enclosures, which offer a DRM-free standard for peer-to-peer content exchange and publishing years before Longhorn locks down those ports.
For more information on Broadcatching, see also:
BitTorrent + RSS = The New Broadcast
Broadcatching - Not Broadcasting
Broadcatching - The Early Days
RSS + BitTorrent Announcement Soon?
BitTorrent, RSS and Broadcatching, Catching On
First Broadcatching App Available! (And Related News)
Broadcatching Roundup
RSS, BitTorrent and Broadcatching for Courts