P2P (peer-to-peer) services are among the most used methods for viewing Internet television. These services allow a network of computers to operate without clients or fixed servers, but as a series of nodes that present an equal to each other, allowing each node to act as clients and server with respect to the others.
Through these connections between different users it is possible to display any independent television channel of the locality, besides that while more users are in the network at the same time, will obtain a better performance of the transfer of data, generating an improvement in the quality of transmission and a decrease in the times of load and cut because these systems of superimposed networks manage, optimize and take advantage of the use of the bandwidth of the other users of the network by means of the Conectivi Between them, obtaining a higher yield than with some conventional centralized methods.
Besides the visualization of television channels to a global level, the main attraction of P2P television are sporting events, highlighting countries like Spain where football is the sport of the king, and events such as the Madrid Derby or “the classic” generate that the Networks are filled with users (nodes) allowing to visualize practically in real time the desired match.
Advantages of P2P Television
- As the number of users increases the same way the quality of the service will.
- Access to these services is free of charge.
- Due to being an open technology has been facilitated its use and improved its performance from the beginnings of implementation of it.
- Access to foreign channels that are not on the grill of local services.
Disadvantages of P2P Television
- The illegality of the payment content transmission has generated controversy, exchanging files protected by copyright laws. Distributors are against this technology for sporting events for which transmission concessions are quoted in local or centralized services.
- The P2P service implies a high use of the network, so the Internet service providers (ISP) could limit the capacity of these connections, by not perceiving any benefit of the free character of this service.
- The asymmetry between connections would make the optimal connection between the nodes of the P2P network difficult.
- Of presenting few nodes or users in network would have a delay time in the transmission, which causes that what is seen is not in real time.
One of the most used and known programs is SopCast. This was one of the initial softwares in the world of P2P television transmission, maintaining a high popularity and demand today. SopCast started as a unique application for Windows operating systems, but it already has services for Linux, MAC and even Android systems.
There is a dependency on the number of users on a given channel and the rate of rise they have with the quality of the buffer. A “stable” channel is defined when the buffer marks at least 65% or more, it is recommended to access that channel with a prudent time in advance of the 30-minute event to improve the load.
It is necessary to have the following softwares installed to correctly visualize the links that you want to play in the webplayer of Sopcast, being these:
- Sopcast: The latest available version of the software is desired.
- Internet Explorer: In the same way the last version available, or depending on the browser frequently used the Firefox plugin IETTab or the plugin of Chrome, these will emulate an IE tab in either of the two browsers. If you want to view in mobile version you can download the application SopCast Android or Sop to Http (SopCast).
How to watch P2P TV on ANDROID with SOPCAST
Smartphones or smart phones as time has offered more possibilities compared to computers. It is due to the increase in the power and the storage of the same, as well as the increase of the speed offered by the current 3g and 4g connections, besides the use of the Wi-Fi.
First you must download and install SopCast for Andoid from your website. In this way we will download an APK file as the program, you must have enabled the option that allows to install applications of unknown sources to be able to instar SopCast, because it is an application outside of the Playstore gone.
These factors have generated more common use of these devices to watch series, movies, sporting events through P2P networks, and generally television within this same network online and in real time.
SopCast has a version designed especially for Android, which has features similar to that of its computer counterpart, being the same way completely free.
SOPCAST on an ANDROID mobile or TABLET:
As we said, there is no official Sopcast program for Android, so we have to resort to small tricks like the one I tell you next.
What we are going to do is install an application available in Google Play called SOP to http that what it does is convert the Sopcast SOP type links into typical HTTP links, so that we can open the video stream with our favorite player on a mobile or Android tablet.
The only limitation that we will find using this system is given by the Android operating system itself, and is that it is currently not compatible with Android 5.0 Lollipop.
The operation is very simple, just install Sop to Http on our mobile or Android tablet and have a compatible video player such as the MX player, after which, once installed, each time you click on a link SOP, the application What It will convert to HTTP and automatically launch our player to play the channel.
SOP to Http also supports the possibility to manually add the SOP link that we want, as well as having many other configuration options.
To manually enter a channel, all you have to do is type in the Channel field the number of the channel that is included in the link Sopcast, Sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/XXXXX, where the XXXXX would be the channel number.
Obviously the quality of the reproduction as well as the stability of it are going to be linked in large part to our data connection. Remember that they are P2P links so the data transfer is huge and it makes necessary a good WiFi connection.