Introduction
Online TV is becoming more and more popular. Since “myTV” platform has been published by TVB, people have and may prefer the option of watching films and TV dramas online. However, TVB Limited in Hong Kong is not the first to develop the market of having free web distributed programs. The company started the running the platform in November, 2008(according to zh-hk.etvhk.wikia.com/wiki/MyTV). But some illegal platforms like Firefox, PPStream and TOM365… started even earlier. These platforms shared more than common TV programs from different free TV companies but also movies from 1980s to those on show movies. One of the attractive points of using illegal platforms is that movies form foreign countries that are not on show in Hong Kong can be found. After all, who would step into a cinema for Hollywood Masterpieces?
This short survey would focus on the principle of distributed movie system, a featuring example, the video file type used and my personal feelings after doing this short survey.
The principle of a distributed movie system
This short survey would focus on the principle of distributed movie system, a featuring example, the video file type used and my personal feelings after doing this short survey.
The principle of a distributed movie system
“Distributed computing is the most natural environment for the MOVIE System. The communication model for MOVIE networks is based on one simple principle, uniform for distributed and MIMD-parallel architectures: nodes of such network communicate by sending Movie Script. This model unifies communication and computation: Computing in MOVIE is when a server interprets Movie Script, whereas communication occurs when a server sends Movie Script to be interpreted by another server on the network. Social human activities provide adequate analogies here. One can think of MOVIE network as a society of autonomous intelligent agents, capable of internal information processing and of information exchange, both organized in terms of the same high-level language structures. The processing capabilities of such a system are in principle unlimited. Detailed programming paradigms for distributed computing are not specified initially at the Movie Script level and can be freely selected depending on the application needs. Successful computation/communication patterns with some reusability potential can then be retained within the system in the form of appropriate Movie Script extensions.
The Movie Script-based user-level model for MOVIE networks is uniform, elegant, and appealing. Its detailed technical implementation, however, is a complex task. Communication services must be included at the lowermost level of the inner loop of the Movie Script interpreter and coordinated with scheduling, event handling, software interrupts, and other dynamic components of the server. Also, when building interfaces to existing Open Systems components, we have to cope with various existing network and message-passing protocols. In the networking domain, we use the UNIX socket library as the base-C-level platform, but then the question arises of how to handle higher protocols such as NFS, RPC, XDR and a variety of recent ``open'' models. Similar uncertainties arise in handling and integrating various message-passing protocols for MIMD-parallel computing.
From the above, distributed movie system is base on the parallel computing like peer to peer to download and upload information .The definition of Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is “a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer).
However, the system is more advanced than using peer-to-peer computing only. In most common case, Bit torrent (BT) is used. “BT divides a file into blocks normally of size 0.25M. When “peers” download the file block by block, they will also upload the finished blocks to other “peers”. Therefore, the upload bandwidth increases as the number of the user rises. In contrast, the common technique has only one server for downloading; the server will slowly become overloading when the number of user increases. In order to avoid people who are unwilling to become seeds and close BT directly after download is finished; sometimes someone provides an incomplete file with 99% of it. The remaining 1% is uploaded only when there are enough people who are downloading to nearly completion so that some of them could become seeds” (http://www.funshion.com/english/qa_more.html). That is, when one distribute a 300MB animation with the maximum upload speed=64Kbs and there are 15 people downloading it. The animation can be successfully distributed to those 15 people within 2 hours. As each person who received the file already would become a “Seed” distributor too. So, the more people using BT technology to download, the faster the downloading speed. Another advantage of this technique is that the files can be downloaded from many sources and there is no need to queue up like using Kazza.
Personal feelings
The Movie Script-based user-level model for MOVIE networks is uniform, elegant, and appealing. Its detailed technical implementation, however, is a complex task. Communication services must be included at the lowermost level of the inner loop of the Movie Script interpreter and coordinated with scheduling, event handling, software interrupts, and other dynamic components of the server. Also, when building interfaces to existing Open Systems components, we have to cope with various existing network and message-passing protocols. In the networking domain, we use the UNIX socket library as the base-C-level platform, but then the question arises of how to handle higher protocols such as NFS, RPC, XDR and a variety of recent ``open'' models. Similar uncertainties arise in handling and integrating various message-passing protocols for MIMD-parallel computing.
From the above, distributed movie system is base on the parallel computing like peer to peer to download and upload information .The definition of Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is “a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer).
However, the system is more advanced than using peer-to-peer computing only. In most common case, Bit torrent (BT) is used. “BT divides a file into blocks normally of size 0.25M. When “peers” download the file block by block, they will also upload the finished blocks to other “peers”. Therefore, the upload bandwidth increases as the number of the user rises. In contrast, the common technique has only one server for downloading; the server will slowly become overloading when the number of user increases. In order to avoid people who are unwilling to become seeds and close BT directly after download is finished; sometimes someone provides an incomplete file with 99% of it. The remaining 1% is uploaded only when there are enough people who are downloading to nearly completion so that some of them could become seeds” (http://www.funshion.com/english/qa_more.html). That is, when one distribute a 300MB animation with the maximum upload speed=64Kbs and there are 15 people downloading it. The animation can be successfully distributed to those 15 people within 2 hours. As each person who received the file already would become a “Seed” distributor too. So, the more people using BT technology to download, the faster the downloading speed. Another advantage of this technique is that the files can be downloaded from many sources and there is no need to queue up like using Kazza.
Personal feelings
I think that legal free movie system on web brought convenience to audience who want to have watch TV anytime. As a college student, I don not have time to watch TV programs from in school days. But I can enjoy the TV show in weekends using my own computer anywhere I like.
However, after the exposure to illegal free movie system on web, I rely on it more than legal free movie system. The advantages of illegal free movie system are having recent movies and documentaries on web, having programs that are not shown in Hong Kong but in other countries, allow downloading and have advanced search engine …etc.The system may include those dramas from local legal movie system. I don’t need to get to the homepage of “myTV” but to TOM365 to search for the programs I missed.
However, after the exposure to illegal free movie system on web, I rely on it more than legal free movie system. The advantages of illegal free movie system are having recent movies and documentaries on web, having programs that are not shown in Hong Kong but in other countries, allow downloading and have advanced search engine …etc.The system may include those dramas from local legal movie system. I don’t need to get to the homepage of “myTV” but to TOM365 to search for the programs I missed.
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