all sopcast channels broadcast. 2012European are offline

[ynimerw01]

I had problems (possibly of a different kind) with a couple of sopcast streams of sports channels that don't broadcast the EURO. The stream loaded to 100%, but the screen was black. I'm aware that on the forum it was advised to use VLC and I followed all the steps in the relevant post; but the screen was still black.The Alcorcon-Valladolid stream "behaved" just like the Euro ones ("channel is offline now"), whilst the ones I'm interested in were just "playing" and "black". Please help!

[Admin]

Did you try them again today ynimerw01?

[tyrion]

I think I have an idea what happened. If you goto the Sopcast homepage from Australia you get a banner add at the top for Sentata: The only way to watch the Euros live! Looks like Sentata have paid Sopcast off!

[humpty]

Yea It's all bolotics;
WC got to the top, was all about govt pressure. Even rip off artists don't want the cops at their doorstep.
Prem is purely commercial, all about the pride of a media mogul, so no fear there.
Euro though is a puzzling one, crosses many borders, probably one of the broadcasters got pissed off and managed to blackout some boxes or put pressure on the sopcast.

[faded]

Sucks. I really miss Bloodzeed's stream. Especially when it pisses all over the streaming services offered by the BBC and ITV. Oh well.

[DEAD_MAN_WALKING]

Sucks. I really miss Bloodzeed's stream. Especially when it pisses all over the streaming services offered by the BBC and ITV. Oh well.

Your on drugs ya fool...

[runeks]

We seriously need an open p2p streaming protocol, where there is no central site for UEFA/FIFA to address. My guess is that FIFA or UEFA has contacted SopCast and threatened them with lawsuits, and SopCast can't really do anything but take down the streams; they don't have the money to fight UEFA.

This why we need an open p2p streaming standard. Consider BitTorrent, this is an open standard (albeit not for streaming). No one can "take down" BitTorrent, because as soon as some tracker site is taken down, a new one opens up. This isn't possible with SopCast because no one but the SopCast creators know how it works, and so no one but them can create SopCast trackers.

I'm in the process of investigating if any well-functioning open p2p streaming protocols exist. It will require some testing, and perhaps developing a proper front-end for the open protocols that do exist. But I think it's a really interesting technology with a lot of uses. This is exactly why openness is important for peer-to-peer standard; it makes it nearly impossible to take down streams. Consider if The Pirate Bay hosted p2p stream trackers. They don't seems like they would take down anything based on threats about law suits.