Live Cricket, Soccer and more using SopCast
Do you miss watching live cricket or UEFA soccer? Are Sports packages on Cable/Satellite TV too expensive? Don’t worry be happy because in comes Peer-to-Peer TV (P2PTV) to the rescue. As the name suggests P2PTV leverages Peer-to-Peer technology to distribute audio/video. The first question someone would have is how is the quality? The answer is its very good and the secret lies in the P2P technology. Every user who is downloading the video stream is also simultaneous uploading the same video stream hence contributing to the overall bandwidth.
There are many P2PTV software available but the oldest and most popular amongst the lot is SopCast.
SopCast is freeware and can run on both Windows and Linux. Windows setup is very straight forward. Simply download the zip file, unzip it, run the setup file and follow on screen instructions (see installation screenshots). This will install 4 components - SopPlayer (for viewing), SopServer (for broadcasting - yes you can broadcast too!!!), VoD and WebPlayer (for viewing in the browser). Double click the SopCast icon and you are on your way. If you are using Windows firewall you need to unblock “SopCast Adver” and “SopCast Main Application” (see screenshot). Click on Channels tab and double click the channel you wish to view.
Linux setup is a little more involved and Ubuntu-Unleashed has a good blog on how to setup SopCast on Ubuntu Gusty Gibon.
Happy viewing 
Disclaimer: This blog entry only provides information on P2P TV and is not responsible for content being broadcast and copyright violations.
1 Comment so far
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I can’t say that I miss live cricket (having never watched it int the first place), but this is an interesting approach to the bandwidth problem. You see this kind of thing with NetMeeting or network video gaming as well: one node on the network acts as a hub for all other nodes and the overall experience is limited by connection speeds to and the performance of that single point.
It would be interesting to look under the hood of this and see how the whole data stream gets propagated or even what algorithm is used to decide who gets connected where in the P2P.
Great find!
Pete Johnson
HP.com Chief Architect
Personal blog: http://nerdguru.net