Tech Vidcasts and BitTorrent

I used to be a huge fan of the show "The Screensavers", which aired on TechTV every night. What could be better for a geek than a live television show devoted to the cutting edge of technology? From Leo Laporte to Patrick Norton to Kevin Rose, I felt as if the stars of the show were somewhat of a "geek family" to me. I was extremely saddened when Comcast bought TechTV and merged the channel in with their horrible G4 channel. After the merger, they basically dumped all the tech-based shows in favor of shows having to do with video games. They kept The Screensavers, but Leo and Patrick weren't part of it. The show quickly went downhill. It finally got so bad that I couldn't watch it. It eventually turned into a show called "Attack of the Show", which is some of the most atrocious television you could watch.

Imagine my elation to find out that my favorite Screensavers alums were doing video podcasts. Now I could watch my favorite tech personalities without the constraints of a corporate structure holding them back. The webcasts are great, by the way. I look forward to each new episode. I have added links to my favorite shows to the menu on the right under "Science & Technology". TWIT (This Week In Tech) is hosted by Leo Laporte, with a slew of guests that usually include Kevin Rose and Patrick Norton, as well as John Dvorak. Systm and Diggnation are productions of Kevin Rose, with co-hosts Dan Huard and Alex Albrecht. DigitalLifeTV is hosted by Patrick Norton and Robert Herron from TechTV. Command-N is a show hosted by Amber MacArthur, who is a TechTV Canada host. All of these are worth checking out.

All of this brings me to BitTorrent, a fabulous bit of file-sharing technology. This technology doesn't necessarily make it easier or quicker to download a file, but it takes the bandwidth burden off of the distributor. Since you're pulling "bits" of the file from your peers (others who have or are downloading the file), you're not costing the distributor bandwidth charges. I think this is important for the fledgling download-only shows. Most don't have advertisements, or they have very little ad support, so they're not making a ton of money. Bandwidth is expensive, and with the popularity of these personalities, their monthly bandwidth can be measured in terabytes (!!!). The use of BitTorrent takes some of this responsibility off of them, thereby ensuring the continuation of these great shows.

I personally use the Azureus BitTorrent client, and while it is slower than a direct download, I see it as my duty to help these guys out in any way I can. Check out these shows -- you'll like them.