The Venice Project 2

Continuing in the spirit of my previous post concerning The Venice Project I must admit to first feelings of unease.

Sampling some of the comments in the forums frequented by beta-testers I am most often intimidated by the tech-speak on subjects far beyond my comprehension. There was, however, a telling note from one who had linked up the site to his domestic television and called his wife in to take a look... "So what?" she asked, proving that a very authentic televisual experienced can be delivered.

But at what cost?

It is certainly clever to have the whole torrenting thing going on in the background; I never could make head or tail from the Azureus status panel and I think only one download (out of about half a dozen attempts) was completed.

But it seems that what we have here is torrenting on steroids. I did suspect that something was afoot when after sampling some of the channels on offer I looked for an 'off' button and found only a 'standby' toggle. Which I hit.

Now it happens to be my old-fashioned habit to turn things off at the end of the day, computers as well as the lights in my office. (This nobody else seems to bother about here in the Sandlands, but I was raised where electricity is expensive!)

After I powered down there was a very brief page display of the Venice Project client before WIndows closed up. So? All day long I guess I had been 'seeding' (if that's the expression in torrent land) without knowing it. Now imagine if I'd left the machine running through the weekend, as many of my colleagues tend to..: How many users being told that they have reached their bandwidth limit will it take to turn Venice Project viewing into a nightmare deserving a 'health warning'?

Or have I missed something?

Be it as it may, I still have a problem reconciling bit torrent delivery and 'the long tail'. If long tail demand is based on niche or elitist content preferences, then there are unlikely to be enough 'seeders' with the same taste on-line at any given time, seeders from whom I can draw 'bits' of my download.