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BBC teams up with Azureus for Zudeo distribution
A fancy new distribution platform is only as good as its content, and while we knew Azureus had the former down pat with Zudeo's snappy HD distribution techniques, we weren't quite sure what they had up their sleeve for the latter part of the equation. Well, good news: BBC just signed up for Zudeo, and will be making "hundreds of episodes" available on the fledgling download service. "Programmes" will include Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and The League of Gentleman, with classics such as Fawlty Towers available as well. There will be DRM slapped on top of the shows, which will be distributed in a "high-quality" form, and there's no word yet exactly how much Zudeo will be charging for these downloads, but if they can break through that $1.99 barrier we're seeing good things in Zudeo's future -- especially with more content deals on the way, which Azureus is planning to announce in January.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
BBC to go peer-to-peer in HD with Azureus
The Beeb is reporting that hundreds of episodes of "programmes" will be released for download via the Zudeo service, based on P2P client Azureus. The videos will be available in HD and will be DRM'ed, exact rights and pricing to be announced. This is certainly big news for fans of Brit TV who don't have... you know... cable.Seriously, though, HD via P2P is a big deal, especially from such an august content horde as the BBC. The presence of a Mac client (Azureus is Java-based) is also good news, although it remains to be seen if the actual videos will play for us. Will P2P challenge the video dominance of the iTunes Music Store?[via Digg]
Azureus pushes HD video sharing via BitTorrent
You're probably familiar with Azureus because of its popular BitTorrent client, now they're rolling that into a digital media platform called Zudeo. As Wired points out, like Youtube, Zudeo aims to let content providers publish and showcase material easily and freely. Unlike Youtube, Zudeo is built to support high definition video and long form content. According to the CEO, it has signed deals with 12 television film and media companies, with content, pricing and DRM details forthcoming in the next couple of weeks. The site is active today, and you can already find and download some of Engadget HD's favorite content like mariposaHD and Elephant's Dream. We tested it out and had no problems with download speed or playback of the VC-1 and h.264 encoded files, but we're not sure if they're ready to rival Youtube just yet. Since it requires additional software and doesn't just play in the browser, a lot of the convenience of other video sharing sites is lost, and as traffic increases Zudeo will need to rely on its own customers to continue to seed downloaded files. We'll see if Zudeo has what it takes as HDTV and IPTV grow closer together over the next year, and face rivals at Warner, MyTVPal, Xbox Live and others.[Via Wired & PVR Wire]
