[mythtv-users] tv guide line-up free

[David Brodbeck]

On Sep 5, 2007, at 3:57 PM, Robert Current wrote:
> Then (here comes the flame-bait), that file could very easily and
> quickly be distributed as a torrent, hopefully with some logical name.
>  For example:
> 2007-7-14-to-2007-7-21-Yahoo-Local-Boston-Cable-4myth.torrent
> I'd guess that torrent would be 7 days of mythconverg listing data
> that came from Yahoo listing data for local cable in Boston, wouldn't
> you?
>
> Import and export scripts would be easy…  Would the download rate of
> the torrent cripple this concept?

I don't think it would cripple it, but I'm not sure torrent is the  
right tool for this particular job.  BitTorrent isn't so hot for  
files that are less than a dozen megabytes or so in size, because it  
has so much startup overhead.  I know when I grab a BitTorrent file,  
it usually takes several minutes for it to locate peers before I get  
*any* data.

What you really want is a way to randomly pick some other user to  
download from.  The size of any single transfer is small, but you  
need to spread it out so not everyone grabs from the same person.   
BitTorrent is aimed more at the situation where you're moving a  
single large file.

I thought the discussions of using USENET for this were interesting,  
actually.  I'm not sure if USENET is the right tool, but I think it's  
better than BitTorrent.