Video in demand

Google has been perfecting a technique of pre-loading YouTube video clips for particular users before they even hit the play button. The choice is made by an algorithm which analyses users’ viewing histories and profiles. The selection is currently being cached in the memory of some mobile devices running the Android operating system, although YouTube intends to expand it to other devices soon. [...] Regardless of protocol, current methods for delivering video mostly still use a traditional A-to-B form of distribution. An alternative is peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, in which data are distributed by users to each other rather than being downloaded from a central source. Such networks were popularised by file-sharing services and, until recently, were used by Spotify to build up its huge music-streaming service. Spotify now intends to rely on centralised servers instead. This, says Babar Zafar, a Spotify product manager, is because CDNs are becoming more important to deliver media to users reliably. - Technology Quarterly via The Economist [via/web:http://streaming-tv.us]