(Note: this is a repost from a few days ago since unfortunately there were problems with this entry showing up in some browsers. Sorry…)

This entry is taken directly from our fast growing Audiovisual P2P Wiki section – just added today:

RSS TV = Indie IPTV

While the entertainment industry is betting high on set top boxes (”media centres”) – proprietary technology and user unfriendly DRM included – for TV over the net delivery (IPTV), there is an increasing number of users building their own PVRs (Personal Video Recorder) or a combination of PC, feed aggregator (RSS reader) and BitTorrent technology to get both legally available independently produced content, as well as mainstream TV shows delivered automatically to their PCs.

From an indie media producer’s point of view RSS TV can be seen as the future of content distribution: RSS TV = Indie IPTV (or maybe it should be called iPTV: Rip. Mix. Burn. Feed…?)

For details see these related online articles:

Coming to your TV: RSS (describes an alternative use for Apple’s upcoming AppleTV – www.p2p-blog.com, 10.01.07)

Hack Attack: Get your TV season pass with Democracy (www.lifehacker.com, 03.10.06)

How to Subscribe to TV Shows Using The Democracy Player, Bittorrent, and RSS (soylentfoo.jnewland.com, 23.02.06)

For finding independently produced video content see:

Videoblog and Indie TV Directories

• Democracy Channel Guide | Democracy Internet TV Channel Guide (channelguide.participatoryculture.org)

• FireAnt.tv – Videoblogs, Vlogs, Video Podcast, Video Podcast Directory, Internet TV (fireant.tv)

• The videoblog and podcast directory. (www.mefeedia.com)

• VLOGDIR The Videoblog Directory listing thousands of vlogs and vodcasts (Note: “See VLOGDIR” only links to a photo of the directory – “Choose Category” and hit “Go” instead) (www.vlogdir.com)

• The blip.tv “Shows” directory (Click “Shows” and “Browse by…” to find content by genre.) (www.blip.tv)

One starting point for finding independently produced content on YouTube is

• “YouTube’s Featured Videos by Category”.

But the best way to find interesting content on YouTube might be to look at “Playlists” from users with similar interests or at “Related” when watching a video.

This page http://www.youtube.com/rssls explains how the YouTube RSS feeds work. Example: if you wanted to subscribe to the videos by YouTube user geriatric1927 http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=geriatric1927 you would add

feed://www.youtube.com/rss/user/geriatric1927/videos.rss

in e.g. Democracy Player http://www.getdemocracy.com/ under “Channels” > “Add Channel…”: all of this user’s videos will then be downloaded automatically – including videos that he might add only later to his channel!

Indie distributors not so familiar with online media distribution might also want to have a look at the Beginner’s Guide to the AudioVisual P2P Net (in this P2P Wiki section) and specially at the open-source Broadcast Machine http://www.getdemocracy.com/broadcast/.

Tags: how-to, p2p tv, rss tv, iPTV, videoblogs, indie tv, democracy player