Warner to start movie downloads |

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Warner to start movie downloads

9. May 2006, 19:43 Uhradmin

Warner Brothers is to start selling film downloads via the internet using the same technology once blamed for helping people swap illegal copies. The Hollywood studio has reached a deal with the web company Bit Torrent, which uses peer-to-peer technology to allow the quick distribution of large files.

Warner says users will be able to buy downloads of films and TV shows on the same day they become available on DVD.

Pricing for a feature film will be about the same as the DVD release.

The cost of a television show could be as low as a dollar.

Rivals to follow?

Warner added that whether a TV show or feature film, it will only play on the initial computer used to make the download.

The downloads will not therefore work on other PCs or standard DVD players.

Other Hollywood studios are now likely to launch similar services.

They believe movie fans will prefer to pay a reasonable price for a legal downloaded movie rather than risk illegally swapping a computer file that could contain viruses or be a poor quality copy of a film.

Peer-to-peer connections enable people to quickly swap files between their computers without having to go via an internet server.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4753435.stm

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Free Limewire / P2P

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections. Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing content files (see file sharing) containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format is very common, and realtime data, such as telephony traffic, is also passed using P2P technology.A pure peer-to-peer network does not have the notion of clients or servers, but only equal peer nodes that simultaneously function as both "clients" and "servers" to the other nodes on the network. This model of network arrangement differs from the client-server model where communication is usually to and from a central server. A typical example for a non peer-to-peer file transfer is an FTP server where the client and server programs are quite distinct, and the clients initiate the download.