So, for 300 bucks you have some sort of embedded OS on a PC.

For video streaming, you do not need much RAM and power, and the fact that you become a sharing node means that the distrubuting company does not need gigabits of bandwidth to stream films... Cheaper to run.

To get all of Hollywood bar Sony onboard, I would guess that these fims are not unprotected, and if they are touting a closed "black box", I would guess that the DRM encryption is new and linked to each paying subscriber and box serial number, and in that way, avoiding the creation of an open PC software download and display client (until some crackers breaks open the box and reverse engineers it). Also, being a connected machine, this would enable the user to download new keys after it's drm keys get revoked.

Now, that's fine until John Q. Cracker finds a way to transform all of these boxes into zombies or does a firmware remote-reflash and kills all of the boxes in north amercia...

Isn't it funny how the most powerful content sharing networks pre DMCA were free, worked rather well, were built up and managed publicly. These didn't cost content providers a cent! These networks truly maximized public utilization of creative works.

Someone really ought to rethink the current hollywood model, as it really looks antiquated in light of this (the costs of distributing are NIL).

Fast forward to today, copyright law is destroying one of the greatest achievements of the past century by locking everything down and restricting it's use (even stripping away fair use provisions in the US).

"But what was missing from the equation was a P2P system that can reduce or eliminate the content delivery costs of bandwidth, which in most systems takes up about 30 per cent of the total system costs."

The only thing P2P systems may be missing is a means to compensate the real artists!! The problem is that too many people in the media industry are not artists, they serve no useful purpose anymore, but they still want to be paid. Unless they start adding some kind of public value I feel these dinosaurs have no right to exist. Even then their existence should be weighed against the harm they cause.

1st this article shows the one company to advoid at all cost: Sony

This new service raise some questions. 1st yes it will be hacked. but maybe now Hollywood (minus criminal corporate Sony) finally understand that DRM is not the solution and yes they have one in place(DRM) for this new P2P service but they just did not put a insane budget in it because it rendered useless in a matter of hours. 2nd Unless the movie cost are what it should be (like 1$ or 2$) or it is a subscribtion service (again must be very low priced). i don't see why i should pay to let my precious bandwidth be use by everyone else...

A number of set top boxes run a modified version of Linux.

Quite often the manufacturers refuse to obey the GPL and release sources (maybe problematical in a DRM box) or only do so after legal action and then in as obstructive a way possible.

There would be a certain irony if a box whose purpose is to prevent movie piracy had a pirated OS.