P2P-Next Project presents Internet-HD quality end-to-end streaming distribution of professional content to low-cost STB hardware at IBC 2009

P2P-Next Project presents Internet-HD quality end-to-end streaming distribution of professional content to low-cost STB hardware at IBC 2009

Amsterdam, 11 September 2009 - P2P-Next, a pan-European conglomerate of 20 industrial partners, media content providers and research institutions, is releasing its latest version of NextShare, an Open Source P2P (Peer-to-Peer) video delivery platform today at IBC 2009. NextShareTV is a STB (Set-Top-Box) implementation of the NextShare content delivery platform running on a low-cost embedded hardware.

The P2P-Next research project has successfully released and tested the latest version of their P2P live streaming technology. This new technology allows everyone to broadcast a live stream, such as a webcam feed or TV channel, to millions of Internet users. Key is the bandwidth efficiency of this technology, by expanding the proven BitTorrent protocol you can stream to thousands of people using roughly the same amount of bandwidth as for a single user.

NextShareTV is demonstrated at the IBC 2009 exhibition on the EBU Village (Hall 10 Booth D21).

"This is an extremely ambitious project which will create a viable broadcast platform that would enable large audiences to stream and interact with live and on-demand (VoD) content via a set top box or a TV receiver. In addition, it is our intention to allow audiences to build communities around their favourite content via a fully personalized system. We are enthusiastic about the P2P-Next plans to test the P2P-Next system for major international broadcasting events," declares Lieven Vermaele, EBU Technical Director.”

"During 2009, Pioneer has been optimising the implementation of the NextShare protocols and is now able to support Internet-HD quality streaming using a pure P2P solution with reduced playback latencies. We are pleased to be able to inform industry of our results at IBC and help inform work towards creating an interoperable standard for Open Internet TV devices of the future, " says Mark Stuart of Pioneer Digital Design and Technical Director of the P2P-Next project.

"The IBC 2009 demonstration coincides with our preparations to the launch the P2P-Next Living Lab which should be a very exciting time for our project as a whole. The Living Lab launch is a crucial milestone for the P2P-Next project and allows the general public to engage with our services for the first time”, says Dr Keith Mitchell, Lancaster University the co-coordinating partner of the Living Lab trials. “We are very excited about the prospect of real world trials and experiments with the NextShare technology on both PC and STB platforms, both of which will shortly be available. We see this as a great learning opportunity not only for ourselves, but for the industry as a whole. I’d encourage all those interested in becoming become part of a new social television community to visit our site (www.livinglab.eu) and register in order to gain early access to our technology.”

"Combining European wide technology potential with significant European Commission funding provides the means to create Internet based future television for global adoption. As a multi technology organization VTT has its strength in combining different technologies in an unprejudiced way. VTT can thus provide both innovations and new tools for this challenging project", says Jari Ahola, Technology manager and Coordinator of the project from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. "As the European television is going digital by 2012 we need to be prepared for the technical, legislative and regulatory challenges of digital convergence in time to lead the imminent change of the media distribution value chain."

The project has an open approach towards sharing results. All core software technology is available as open source, enabling new business models. P2P-Next will also address a number of outstanding challenges related to content delivery over the internet, including technical, legal, regulatory, security, business and commercial issues. All material is available at www.p2p-next.eu. The P2P-Next project has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no 216217.