If you frequent “the Bay”, you’ve likely noticed something different in its results. Besides the classic symbols leading to comments and the magnet link, a play icon has appeared in recent days. That means the torrent is available for streaming on BayStream, a new platform currently being evaluated. Users can upload files with a maximum size of 20 gigabytes, and it confirms that its support is not limited to video.
Many BitTorrent clients offer the possibility of enabling sequential downloads, so we can watch content with a compatible player even when it’s incomplete. With a good connection and a healthy number of seeds, the process is indistinguishable from streaming, and for the advanced user, that’s more than enough. However, many people out there still feel uncomfortable with the idea of installing a BitTorrent client, configuring port forwarding, and manipulating trackers. They want to access the ecosystem, but see the technical commitment as a problem.
That detail is what made Popcorn Time explode in popularity (at the time). The “P2P Netflix” managed to reduce the whole ritual to a couple of clicks, although it’s not easy to find a a clean client these days. The people at The Pirate Bay are evaluating a sort of alternative in the form of BayStream, and it already has an advantage: it requires no additional software.
The idea is that the user goes to The Pirate Bay, searches for content, and clicks on the play arrow or the capital “B” letter to open it in BayStream. If we go to BayStream directly, the platform behaves like a kind of cloud file hosting. The maximum size is 20 gigabytes, and it seems to confirm that its support includes audio streaming.
BayStream is not necessarily a new project. Let’s not forget that The Pirate Bay launched BayFiles in 2011, the police blew it up in 2014, and it returned recently. On the streaming side, there was also the Stream It! feature, backed by the Torrents Time plugin.
Obviously, we have many doubts. Is it a service from The Pirate Bay, or does it belong to a third party? Is the streaming pure P2P, or are servers involved? How will it be financed? For now, the streaming option appears on torrents with a large number of seeds, and it doesn’t work very well with proxies.
Source: TorrentFreak
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