02/22/2008 — IRT is Partner in the European Research Project P2P-Next

P2P-Next, a pan-European conglomerate of 21 industrial partners, media content providers and research institutions, will carry out a research project aiming to shape “next generation” internet TV based on peer-to-peer (P2P) technology.

The P2P-Next project will run over four years, and plans to conduct a large-scale technical trial of new media applications running on a wide range of consumer devices. If successful, this ambitious project could create a platform that would enable audiences to stream and interact with live content via a PC or set top box. In addition, it is our intention to allow audiences to build communities around their favourite content via a fully personalized system.

This technology could potentially be built into Video on Demand (VOD) services in the future and plans are underway to test the system for major broadcasting events.

The project has an open approach towards sharing results. All core software technology will be available as open source, enabling new business models. P2P-Next will also address a number of outstanding challenges related to content delivery over the internet, including technical, legal, regulatory, security, business and commercial issues.