WebtorrentDesktop, Vuze and a number of other torrent clients are what are considered 'hybrid' clients and can download and upload data between both traditional torrent protocol and webrtc based torrent protocol. By using a torrent link for a file already seeded by hundreds or thousands of seeders it makes the file more robust in the long term. For those who want to use a magnet link from our website to save the file (using a hybrid or traditional torrenting client) the file will be fast with tons of peers and seeds. For those who want to watch directly in the browser, their service gets faster and more reliable as the site grows and the technology is adopted by more and more torrent clients. It is worth mentioning that webrtc torrents are new but growing quickly. WebTorrent-Desktop has over 250k installs and vuze has well over a million. As they become more popular and as our site grows and matures it will be only natural for other torrent clients to add in webrtc compatibility
By suggesting you submit torrents to the site that are already popular, distributed and compatible it future proofs the service.
The in-browser streaming has limitations based on what browsers will and will not allow you to do. You cannot create tcp/udp connections by ip/port meaning you cannot connect to traditional torrent clients. WebRTC solves that restriction by allowing you to connect to hybrid torrent clients and other users of the site.
In regards to the magnet link changing: WebTorrent-Desktop adds a number of 'default' trackers to every item added to it to improve compatibility but there is a common misconception with torrents that the magnet link is needed. All you need for a torrent to work is the file hash. If you look at the magnet link you will have a parameter as urn:btih:. The hash following that can be placed in any torrent client and it >should< be able to re-create the torrent file. The trackers are there to improve speed of reconstructing the torrent file and to speed the process of finding peers where DHT cannot be used effectively or as quickly.
Very short version: When submitting to the site, please use media that is already well seeded to avoid issues. Right now the site is very much proof of concept still and we are working on the underlying code to make it as quick and stable as possible. In the long term we will rely on more torrent clients adopting the hybrid model which will offer a HUGE boost to site performance.
That is a really interesting piece of information, thank you!
I have a question on this though: where the content files for WebTorrents are actually stored?
In case of normal torrent, the files are permanently stored on users hard-drives, so they can seed them indefinitely long.
However in case of Webtorrent, the files are stored in the browsers cache (if I understood correctly), and so they will be deleted automatically very soon after user finished watching the video.
So in this sense, Web-torrenting doesn't help the torrent-network at all in long-term, as it provides leechers only, but almost does not help on seeding part... Could you please comment if that is correct, btw?
So, who will ensure the videos are going to stay there and be seeded, so visitors of webtorrent site like Purevidz could actually be able to see the movies? Users with Hybrid clients only?