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]
