EZTV, a very large collective of people (and large bittorrent tracker) has just started experimenting with the swarm player and 'tstream' files - backwardly-compatible torrent files which also contain the Swarm Player information required to coordinate the pieces into a progressive download... In short, you can (with a little time to let the show start buffering) actually watch files as they stream over bittorrent. I gave it a go with a couple of TV episodes (Daily Show and Colbert Report) and it worked almost flawlessly.
TVAnts is another example of much smaller-scale bittorrent-based realtime TV streaming, but the P2P-Next's Swarm Player, and the underlying developments and upgrades to the bittorrent technology, finally prove that on-demand, realtime P2P IPTV is actually feasible. In high quality. Available to almost everybody. Of course, the more people who watch and seed after they're done, the more others can enjoy the same content... Share-alike embodied.
The technology is nearly there - given 18-24 months, I'd say it'll still be patiently waiting for the telecommunications industry to catch up! Raw bandwidth to consumers' homes is what we need now, and fewer limits on bandwidth consumption. The ISPs are going to have to rework their business models because this is a real double-edged sword for them, but it's only a good thing for the consumer in the long run.
