Press & Blog Coverage

But as corporations lick their chops at the prospect of digital-video windfalls, Worcester's Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), a small cadre of young activists and programmers, is heading in the opposite direction. The group has developed an open-source, nonprofit Internet TV platform that looks to draw the average viewer into this brave new world.
- Boston Phoenix, October 27, 2005

As democratizing the airwaves continues to be a vital battle waged by media reformers, DTV offers an entirely counter model for distribution. The number of active bloggers in the U.S. alone rivals audiences of mainstream network TV so it seems likely that the "screenager" generation will tune into DTV for interesting and engaging media.
- MediaRights News, October 21, 2005

"David Moore, from ParticipatoryCulture.org, was kind enough to address a few questions I had for him related to this post, comparing Internet TV and Video podcasts: With bittorrent, you don't need to be a huge broadcaster anymore to be able to reach millions of people... that's what makes internet TV such an exciting medium and such a level playing field."
- The Apple Blog, September 15, 2005

"That's wonderful!" -- Gabriel, Microbians
- NewsToday, September 9, 2005

"In August, the non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation released DTV, a Mac and soon-to-be Windows application for full-screen IPTV to desktops."
- TechNewsWorld, September 9, 2005

A non-profit group wants to make it easy for anyone to be an Internet-TV broadcaster..."The DTV rolls up everything you need to find video channels, subscribe to channels, download video and watch it in one package," PCF co-director Holmes Wilson said... "We want to make a mass medium for video that works in the same way as blogs do today."
- TechWeb, September 6, 2005

"Internet TV -- long hyped by Microsoft and other major computer industry players -- has a new advocate. A non-profit corporation is developing a free, open source Internet TV platform with funding from technology industry luminaries Mitch Kapor and Andy Rappaport. ... The Participatory Culture Foundation, and its Internet TV application, DTV, will deliver full-screen Internet TV to desktops."
- TechNewsWorld, September 6, 2005

"The Participatory Culture Foundation folks are doing great work on making video an online staple. This is potentially pathbreaking stuff." -- Dan Gillmor.
- Bayosphere, August 26, 2005

"After only a few minutes of DTV, the 2nd beta, I could feel the difference. It's faster, stronger, and better."
- Download Squad, August 26, 2005

"An organization called the Participatory Culture Foundation -- an offshoot of the peer-to-peer activist group Downhill Battle -- has launched the first beta version of its DTV software, an application that collects and distributes independent video online."
- MacNewsWorld and E-Commerce Times, August 18, 2005

"This type of software might be covered in the '10 Things that Changed the World' specials in the next decade... DTV turns into a DIY TV hub or aggregator on your computer with easy archiving and viewing tools. It takes no more than five minutes to download the software. DTV has an intuitive interface and flexible folders for 'channel' management."
- AlterNet blogger Kristina Rizga, August 17, 2005

"Holmes Wilson, co-director of Participatory Culture, will guest on tonight's Your Mac Life. Wilson is one of the creators of DTV, a large-scale Internet video creation and distribution platform which, because it is based on open standards and open source software, will be available to everyone -- but it's for Mac users first."
- Macsimum News and Your Mac Life, August 17, 2005

[PCF] Director Tiffiniy Cheng said she is happy to let the public decide how to utilize her group's open-source product after it is released into the wild. "In the end, we don't believe that proprietary and closed is going to advance independent filmmaking," she said... "Making sure the tool is open-source and free and easy to use... is very political in nature."
- Red Herring, August 17, 2005

The Participatory Culture Foundation last week launched its test version of "DTV" for Mac OS X (a Windows version is promised in a few weeks). Although it has a few bugs, the program gathers a bunch of links into one spot and delivers it to your screen, cable company-style.
- Chicago Tribune (free reg. req.), August 16, 2005

"Downhill Battle -- an amazing, energetic, imaginative copyfighting nonprofit group -- has spun off something called the Participatory Culture Foundation with the aim of making DTV, an open source video publishing, aggregating and viewing tool: in other words, a TV killers."
- BoingBoing, August 14, 2005

The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) today has released a Mac-only beta of its DIY Internet TV software that may bring moving images to podcasting - and make it simple, too. The open-source software has been built to make watching and developing video transmissions within RSS feeds easy.
- MacWorld UK, August 14, 2005

"I've had a chance to check out both Broadcast Machine and DTV now, and you can safely color me impressed. BM is incredibly easy to install and use -- you can set up and be publishing in literally a few minutes' time. DTV has a nice, clean interface and is also dead easy to use."
- Social Software Weblog, August 11, 2005

"We at Ourmedia are big supporters of the efforts by Participatoryculture.org to create a free, open-source platform for Internet television."
- New Media Musings by J.D. Lasica, August 10, 2005

"Not only does this idea look amazing, but it is Open Source, open standards, and is being released for Mac OS X first!"
- John P. Hoke's Asylum, August 10, 2005

"...DTV will be basically a media player/ front end for a torrent community, the content for which is wide open. Not the first time we've seen something along these lines, but probably the approach with the best shot at living up to its claims of becoming "Internet TV" in the way that the term makes you think of the concept."
- Screenhead, August 9, 2005

"The fine folks at Downhill Battle just released a Beta of their Internet TV software for Mac OS X, called DTV. Mac users can download it now. It's totally free and open-source."
- Apple.Slashdot.org, August 9, 2005

The Participatory Culture Foundation today announced the release of DTV, its new open-source internet TV software that is designed to make watching videos from RSS feeds easy... To get "Mac people flexing their skills on the project," a prize of $1000 will be awarded to the person who submits the best interface which is then used by DTV.
- Mac News Network, August 9, 2005

Open-source internet TV software for Mac OS X: The Participatory Culture Foundation announced the release of DTV, its new open-source internet TV software that is designed to make watching videos from RSS feeds easy.
- Digg.com, August 9, 2005

"DTV beta for Mac is now live."
- Metafilter, August 9, 2005

"Participatory Culture to launch DTV"
- Rocketboom Daily Vlog, August 8, 2005

On Tuesday, an organization called the Participatory Culture Foundation--an offshoot of the peer-to-peer activist Downhill Battle group--will launch the first beta version of its DTV software, an application that will collect and distribute independent video online. Its first version, for Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, will have the clean lines of iTunes, and full-screen video, all based on BitTorrent technology... "We think that online video needs a home base," said David Moore, the foundation's director of outreach, explaining his group's development project. "It needs an iTunes."
- CNET News, "File-swap TV comes into focus," August 8, 2005

"This project fascinates me because it's a continuation of the open source, open community work that's bubbling up all over the Internet in order to make it easier for you and me and all the rest of us to create and share creative works. I got to see a demo of this at a loud, crowded, pseudo-hip coffee shop downtown last week and it's amazing."
- Blogspotting -- BusinessWeek Online, July 29, 2005

"This new internet TV will be fullscreen, high quality and way more fun than commercial television. This is PCF's Open Source Project and we are giving it a try. See our creative pool commercials on internet TV."
- Joey Tomatoes, July 29, 2005

"As a pastor I am very excited about the project over at the Participatory Culture Foundation called DTV: Internet TV. Just imagine being able to take our churches video content and placing it on the net using their Broadcast Machine which allows the new DTV client to react with. This will make delivering video content to the masses much simpler and more automated."
- Mike and Tanya Norton, "Internet TV a Close Reality for Churches," July 28, 2005

"Internet TV is almost here!" Submitted by Man0-iGO to Digg, "a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control."
- Digg, July 28, 2005

"Put very simply this software has been designed to allow artists like you and I to broadcast high quality video to a global audience. Opening up the door for independent television producers and film makers to showcase their work over a highly accessible medium."
- deviantART, July 21, 2005

"Design the winning UI for Internet TV, get $1000 (help the next-gen video player powered by BitTorrent)."
- Waxy Miniblog, July 20, 2005

"Downhill Battle's new project is the Participatory Culture digital video project, a tool that lets you publish, receive and play back video by using BitTorrent, RSS aggregation, and the multi-format video playback engine VLC -- all packaged together in an easy-to-use parcel that can be readily used by information civilians."
- BoingBoing, July 19, 2005

The Participatory Culture Foundation, an organization that emerged from music activist group Downhill Battle, is providing an open-source platform for internet television. The mission of the nonprofit has a more political bent. The group wants "to create tools for broader, deeper engagement with culture and politics," according to its website. "The idea is that anyone should be able to publish video to thousands or millions of people at no cost because P2P technology makes that possible," said Nicholas Reville, one of the co-directors of the project. The group wants to "open up this video space in the way that the web opened up self-publishing for text or photographs."
- Wired News, July 15, 2005

Leading videoblogger Steve Garfield discusses Broadcast Machine around minute 21 of this interview, conducted live from MacWorld Boston 2005: "Broadcast Machine... is free software that allows you to host your videos using underlying bittorrent technology... everyone will be able to have their own channel." (Thanks Steve!)
- Digital Production Buzz, July 12, 2005

Get ready for a new way to present your work. Peer-to-peer publishing with BitTorrent means file size and cost are not issues anymore, so you can offer fullscreen video with no bandwidth costs. That is the mindset behind the Participatory Culture project. We sat with Tiffiniy Cheng of Participatory Culture to discuss bringing the media back into the hands of the people, publishing video on the Internet, and President Bush's pirated music.
- Gear Live Podcast, July 6, 2005

"Thanks to ubiquitous broadband and sophisticated production and delivery technologies, the amateur video you produce can now reach a mass audience. ParticipatoryCulture.org is building open-source tools that will allow anyone to publish video to a channel that users can subscribe to-- sort of an ITunes for video."
- PC World, July 2005 issue

The latest releases followed Monday's announcement of Google's own video player, based on the open-source cross-platform media player VLC... The move was praised by open-source advocates, including the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), which also uses VLC. "Internet TV has been held back by proprietary battles over codecs [video compression formatting] and delivery," said Tiffiniy Cheng of the PCF, who predicted that Google's clout in the space would rapidly ramp up improvement to video players."
- Red Herring, June 28, 2005

Following news that Google will be using VLC, the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) says DTV, its open-source internet TV player, also embeds the VLC in a desktop aggregator for video RSS feeds.
- p2p.Net, June 28, 2005

In "Be the Media: the state of the public webcasting platform," Jeff Reifman writes, "Broadcast Machine makes it easy for organizations to run their own BitTorrent host and generate their own RSS feeds. CommonBits and Broadcast Machine are both excellent platforms for delivering the coming wave of citizen media content. And there are others."
- Common Bits, June 24, 2005

Cory Doctorow posts the PCF job announcement: "We're announcing 3 new job openings at Participatory Culture to help us develop our video player application and the web applications that will dovetail with it. You'll be joining a small but awesome team of developers."
- BoingBoing, June 21, 2005

In his post "I Believe: The Tools, They're Out There," Ernest Miller prominently mentions the Participatory Culture Foundation as leading the charge for "progressive prescriptions" in social software.
- Corante, "The Importance Of...", June 10, 2005

"I've been meaning to talk about Broadcast Machine for a little while now... instead of needing to eat the bandwidth cost of hosting video to thousands of potential viewers, a small website owner can serve video affordably and, moreover, relatively easily via the Broadcast Machine software interface. It can also be used to publish an aggregate channel of found video just as easily, so fans and editors can re-publish content created by others."
- Social Software Weblog, June 10, 2005

"If podcasting can be described as TiVo for audio, then the open-source Internet TV platform that the Participatory Culture Foundation plans to release by late June might be described as TiVo for the Internet. (Via New Media Musings.)"
- Unmediated, June 8, 2005

Pioneering blogger Zephyr Teachout writes about the release of Broadcast Machine.
- Personal Democracy Forum, June 6, 2005

"Videoblogger Steve Garfield has a new interview with Holmes Wilson of Downhill Battle and Participatory Culture Foundation, talking about the F/OSS internet TV platform that Participatory Culture is developing and their recently released video publishing package, Broadcast Machine. Their RSS / bittorrent / vlc application ("TiVo for the internet") is expected to be released for Mac and Windows by the end of this month."
- Slashdot, June 6, 2005

"In this piece I submitted to Rocketboom, I interview Holmes Wilson of the Participatory Culture Foundation about his new release, Broadcast Machine. "
- Steve Garfield's Videoblog, June 6, 2005

Broadcast Machine and FireANT are the spearhead of a global effort by the open source movement to harness the distributed nature of the Internet to make citizen broadcasting a reality. In doing so they've provided independent journalists and media activists with a powerful tool to challenge monopoly broadcasters everywhere and to produce and distribute alternative views of events and issues.
- MediaCenter Sarajevo, by Milverton Wallace, June 2005

"Another Oh My moment today... [Broadcast Machine] could be an excellent way, provided your network's ports allow torrents, to distribute educational video."
- DV for Teachers, May 25, 2005

"I setup a test site on my own server, using Creative Commons video as a source, and it took all of ten minutes to deploy the php package and add an item. The app looks great for a first beta and I didn't have any problems with the process. If you've been video blogging, have a broadband connection, and are looking for ways to distribute video yourself, check out Broadcast Machine. It's a great little package."
- PVR Blog, May 24, 2005

"Publish video channels from your site with Broadcast Machine."
- BoingBoing, May 24, 2005

"For several years, I've been on the search for a better way of publishing student video projects without killing our server space and bandwidth... Combined with a host such as OurMedia, Broadcast Machine could be promising."
- Couros Blog, May 24, 2005

Others focus on the prospect of outsiders' gaining access to your TV set, as bloggers have invaded media on the Web. "Already there is more data downloaded for video over the Internet than there is for music," says Mike Ramsay, cofounder of TiVo. "What happens when a 14-year-old creates a BitTorrent browser that's easy to use and plugs right into your TV? You go from 500 channels to 50 million channels." We soon may find out, as a number of open-source-inspired Internet efforts hope to open the floodgates. "We have tools to let anyone make high-quality videos to reach millions of people," says Tiffiniy Cheng of the Participatory Culture Foundation in Worcester, Mass. "We'll give a channel to anyone who wants a channel."
- Newsweek, May 23, 2005

"Broadcast Machine is the best interface to BitTorrent I've ever seen."
- Jason Kottke, Kottke.org, May 22, 2005

"Highlights and takeaways from the citizens media summit in San Francisco on May 15, 2005... Most exciting new tool that works: participatoryculture.org's open-source video platform for grassroots culture."
- New Media Musings, May 15, 2005

"The New Politics Institute (NPI) has been established by people from across the country and across the political spectrum to help progressives succeed on the dynamic new battlefield of 21st century politics... NPI will also be showcasing the internet television technology of a new start-up, Participatory Culture (www. participatoryculture.org)."
- New Politics Institute Founding Press Release, May 10, 2005