P2P TV Some say the revolution will be televised BY JESS KILBY

You can’t swing a dead horse these days without hitting a story about blogging as the New Journalism. Is it? Isn’t it? Can the public record be trusted to these untrained masses? Can it be trusted any longer to the top-heavy mainstream media?

This debate had all but played itself out on both sides of the fence until last week, when a legion of bloggers covered the Democratic National Convention in Boston as credentialed members of the press. Though the process of integrating bloggers into the press corps wasn’t without its bumps and bruised egos, the party that deep-sixed the candidacy of Howard Dean has still managed to raise the "blogosphere" (can somebody please think of a better word?) to a new level of legitimacy. And in doing so, the DNC has inadvertently raised the hackles of many establishment journalists.

The funny thing is, the onslaught has only just begun. Print reporters were the first to feel the heat from citizen journalists, since text-based blogging is the cheapest, easiest form of do-it-yourself reporting. Then, with the increased accessibility of audio blogging in recent months (see "Talk Hard," Feb. 20, by Jess Kilby), NPR-type folks had reason to get a little sweaty around the collar.

And now, as goes the inevitable, inverse march of time, the broadcast bubbleheads are finally getting their due. Or, er, they’re due to get their due. Any minute now.

You see, homegrown television is the latest buzz in DIY media. As in, set your PC to download Sam Pfeifle’s "Greetings From the Practice Space in My Barn" each week, and catch the latest interviews and performances from local musicians. Or tune in to Lance Tapley’s "Augusta Outtakes" for raw, unedited recordings of House and Senate subcommittee meetings, and decide for yourself what the story really is.

Of course, neither of these shows actually exist. But the point is they could, if Sam or Lance or any other enterprising individual decided to put the time and a little bit of cash into the endeavor. Because — as is the case with most homegrown technology trends — the emergence of indie TV is the result of two things: Commercial equipment and software has become cheap enough for the average consumer; and the missing links required to achieve the end goal (in this case, a feasible distribution system) have been hacked, tweaked, and spun out of thin air by the open-source community, then packaged to be as user-friendly as possible.

What this means is that you probably have almost everything you need to launch your own TV show. The most basic requirements, obviously, are a video camera and a decent microphone. Doesn’t matter what kind, as long as you can translate the feed to digital. That cheapie web cam and external mic that came with your Dell? They won’t look or sound so pretty, but they’ll work.

Next you need software. For aspiring anchorfolk there’s the somewhat pricey (but a bargain for what you get) Visual Communicator package (www.seriousmagic.com), which will set you back $199.95 for the Web version. VC Web includes a slew of customizable graphics, effects, titles, and music clips, so you can have your own Storm Center up and running in less than 20 minutes. The software also features an on-screen teleprompter, and — don’t throw out that box yet! — a green-screen backdrop and clip-on microphone. Video produced with VC can be streamed live or posted for download.

If you’re not so much into copping CNN’s style and just want to get your video into a distributable format, any software that can output files to MPEG — or its open-source sibling, the XviD codec (a codec is a compression/decompression standard) — will do. Search cnet.com for "mpeg encoding" and you’ll find product reviews of the latest authoring software. Some titles go for as little as $7. And if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, you can always get it done for free. Check out the FAQ at xvid.org for instructions on how to get started on the open-source road.

If you’ve made it this far you’ve realized why independent TV doesn’t exactly have the networks shaking in their satellite-feed vans just yet. DIY broadcasting still takes some doing — some passion and determination. It’s not as easy as making a cell-phone call or sending an email. And that’s not even considering distribution models, though that’s actually the easiest part.

Getting your show out the masses is as easy as uploading it to your Web site, if you have enough storage space and you can handle the anticipated drain on your bandwidth. A better solution, though, is to share your files on a peer-to-peer network like BitTorrent (bittorrentz.info is an excellent resource), and to promote the existence of your files on one of the handful of "DV Guide" sites that are popping up. (In fact, the most popular of such sites calls itself just that, though its actual URL is dv.open4all.info.)

As our bought-and-pocketed Congress can (and does) attest to, peer-to-peer networks are a phenomenally efficient way to share large files. Every person who downloads a particular file and then makes that file available for sharing will increase the ability of others to obtain the file. The results are exponential, and proportional to the popularity of a file. It’s like an organic, true-to-life ratings system, where people seek out and watch only what they like, what they trust, and what they want to see. Imagine what a revolution that would be.

Jess Kilby can be reached at jesskilby@yahoo.com