Slapvid - a video player using a p2p network

Video on the Web is now in great demand, but it generates huge traffic. So, last year Youtube spent more than $ 1 million per month on traffic, showing over 100 million videos per day. In response, video file hosting companies are eyeing the transfer of better videos using p2p networks using the traffic of the users themselves. Now most services use desktop applications for these purposes (Joost, Babelgum). The new startup Slapvid wants to provide users with a browser player that uses the principle of p2p networks.

Slapvidruns as a Java applet with the Adobe Flash player. This means that the user will have to download the applet “weighing” 300Kb for the first time - this action excludes the installation of the browser plug-in. This applet controls in the background the delivery of parts of videos for display in the player.

At the beginning of video playback, the player connects to the central server to download the beginning of the video while buffering files from the p2p network takes place. During this request, the server also sends you a list of 3-5 network members watching this video. Video is sent in parts, each of 64Kb. If there are no users playing your video, it is downloaded from a central server.

The service is in a closed beta testing stage, but you can look at the demo player on this page.