AfterDawn: News

SpeedBit aims to speed up video downloads

SpeedBit, an Israeli company located in Herzliya and Haifa, claims its new download accelerator can download a film in under 20 minutes (depending on connection speed, of course). The company is tackling a huge problem with video downloading; downloads take too long and can be hundreds of times larger than music downloads. This problem has led many consumers away from movie download services. The company plans to roll out the video accelerator by April 19th.

The company is still working on the product and it is far from what SpeedBit aims to achieve with it. "Reducing the time to download movies to around 15 minutes will definitely lead to a big upsurge in penetration of the trend," predicts Andrew Hargreaves, an electronics industry analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, a Portland (Ore.) investment bank.



An early, free version of the product designed to improve delivery of Streaming videos from YouTube was rolled out in March, and nearly one million copies already have been downloaded. "Our accelerator deals with the common problems of buffering and freezing and dramatically improves the quality of the viewing experience," says co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Idan Feigenbaum, a 29-year-old, self-taught computer programmer

The first version of the download accelerator, due out next week, is adapted specifically to work with iTunes. SpeedBit aims to release versions in the near future that work on videos sold via other distributors.

Source:
BusinessWeek

Written by: James Delahunty @ 15 Apr 2007 19:01

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• 5 comments

• ZippyDSM

  Quote:(depending on connection speed, of course)
  aint the case across the board if you had a 1000KBS connection you would get anything in 20min or less but most have a 50-300KBS connection ,if you can effectively double crappy 50KBS or even raise the speed by 25% it would be worth trying if not keeping.

  15.4.2007 23:15 #1

• jutsu

  hey is it posible to accel the DL speed?
  if i have 42KB/s internet, i think, whatever i do, i cant make it to go beyond 42KB/s :p

  16.4.2007 09:51 #2

• ZippyDSM

  there are compression tricks to move larger amounts of data faster that is want most of these things are based on I might be off anyone with knowledge want to comment?

  16.4.2007 09:55 #3

• Andrew691

  From the articles source:
  Quote:How does it work? Conventional video delivered over the Internet essentially travels in a continuous stream from the source to the destination—that is, from the seller to the customer. (The distributed architecture of the Net and the intervention of content delivery services such as Akamai Technologies (AKAM) mean that the path is actually far more complex than this.) By contrast, SpeedBit uses complex algorithms to optimize available bandwidth—in effect, downloading different chunks of a video simultaneously over multiple Internet connections, rather than in a single stream.

  16.4.2007 18:43 #4

• borhan9

  I would love to see the download speed increase. I love how everyday there is a new piece of technology that comes out and improves our way of life. I know there are things that make us worse off and lazy, but somethings improve our lives well done Israel.

  16.4.2007 20:41 #5