[From Dewayne Hendricks list--BSA]
[Note: This item comes from friend Charles Brown. DLH]
European Research Project to Shape Next Generation Internet TV
Brussels, 19 February 2008 - P2P-Next, a pan-European conglomerate of
21 industrial partners, media content providers and research
institutions, has received a €14 million grant from the European
Union. The grant will enable the conglomerate to carry out a research
project aiming to identify the potential uses of peer-to-peer (P2P)
technology for Internet Television of the future. The partners,
including the BBC, Delft University of Technology, the European
Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer and VTT
Technical Research Centre of Finland, intend to develop a Europe-wide
“next-generation” internet television distribution system, based on
P2P and social interaction.
P2P-Next statement:
“The P2P-Next project will run over four years, and plans to conduct a
large-scale technical trial of new media applications running on a
wide range of consumer devices. If successful, this ambitious project
could create a platform that would enable audiences to stream and
interact with live content via a PC or set top box. In addition, it is
our intention to allow audiences to build communities around their
favourite content via a fully personalized system.
This technology could potentially be built into VOD services in the
future and plans are underway to test the system for broadcasting the
2008 Eurovision Song Contest live online.
We will have an open approach towards sharing results. All core
software technology will be 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.” =