Ask HN: Streaming a Bittorent Video from a Webpage?

2•trinsic2•2mo ago

I'm wondering if there is a way to stream a video uploaded to Bit torrent from a web page.

I am working on a video essay that I feel might get censored by our current administration. I looked into PeerTube and i'm hesitant to get into decentralization because the point of censorship can be at the node with Activity Pub.

Is there a way to stream videos off of BitTorrent with a tool that is completely web based? The goal is to host videos on my site that can be streamed by visitors with out relying on Video Platforms that can censor the content.

Comments

not_your_vase•2mo ago

So you want to host it yourself, or you want to use bittorrent? The former is how people distributed cat videos before the Youtube era.

The latter is not hosted by you, but by all users participating the swarm. The first page for "bitternt stream online" (sic) keywords in your favorite search engine should should give some ideas about that (I use ecosia now, which gives at least usable results for this).

trinsic2•2mo ago

Well I would seed the torrent and my hope is other people would participate in the swarm at some point. If it was a bittorent user, hopefully they would find it somehow by browsing the list of new videos on piratebay or something...

The goal is for visitors to visit my website read about the video in question, click on the video and get it streamed to their web browser from the torrent itself without a local BitTorrent client.

toomuchtodo•2mo ago

Seed from a PeerTube instance outside of the jurisdiction? You cannot rely on hope that enough peers will join the swarm and seed, so you will still need durable storage somewhere to be origin. Streaming to the client is the easy part imho.

trinsic2•2mo ago

That's a possible idea. I know its not likely in my situation, but the U.S has been putting pressure on European entities through sanctions[0].

Can't I just keep the seed up myself for distribution if nobody else enters the swarm?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46003778

toomuchtodo•2mo ago

Yes.

meatjuice•2mo ago

WebTorrent works on the browser but I'm not sure if this is what you're asking for

https://webtorrent.io/

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