The ACC Tournament started today and practically the whole office was consumed with watching it. Someone sent out a link to an Internet stream of it but I didn’t bother clicking on it, thinking it would be one of those horrible, unwatchable “buffering … buffering…” experiences

Then a co-worker announced he had it going in his cube. I walked over to see the game on TV clear as day.

“Where’s the antenna?” I asked him.

“There’s no antenna,” he replied. “That’s from the Internet stream.

Whoa! I couldn’t believe my eyes. It seemed pixel-perfect.

It turns out the streaming was done by a company called Swarmcast, using a swarm-type technology that predates BitTorrent. Unlike BitTorrent, Swarmcast allows viewers to watch their shows instantly rather than having to wait for the whole download. It was an impressive demonstration that had me marveling the rest of the afternoon.

Interestingly, Swarmcast began life as an open-source application, and Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow was onboard in its early existence. Neither one applies today, however. I scoured the Internets today in search of Swarmcast’s once-GPLed code but could find no trace of it.

I’m now looking at the apps mentioned in Wikipedia’s Peercasting page to see what other tools might offer the same experience. This “swarm streaming” stuff has me hooked!