As one of many ways to reach people with our content we have decided to do an experiment and make one of our most popular television series available through BitTorrent.This technology makes it possible for us to make our content available in a very high quality without having to invest in large server farms and expensive bandwidth.

The very popular series called «Nordkalotten 365» has been aired on traditional TV in Norway. Over 900 000 of Norway’s 4,6 million watched the show in average, and the marketshare was close to 50%! «Nordkalotten 365» is now made available for download. In this series the experienced hiker Lars Monsen has traveled alone through the north of Scandinavia for one year. The first episode is already published and the next episodes will be made available as they are encoded.

The files are MPEG4 H.264, 1024×576 25fps, 3 Mbit/s. No DRM.





So far the experiment has been a huge success. After one day roughly 8000 people have downloaded the torrent file. Because of the limited statistics reporting from the Amazon S3 tracker we are using we don’t have exact numbers from the tracker itself. Taking into account that Norway is a small country with only 4,5 million people this number is above expectations. The file has been out there for one day, and at this point only the first episode of the series is available. The bittorrent technology seems to work especially well for completely legal and high quality downloads. People happily seed the file and the download speeds achieved are reported to several megabits/s. The whole 600 MB file downloading in minutes or even seconds for the people with fast connections.

The files can be downloaded with the use of any bittorrent client, but the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation are promoting the free and open source Miro player as the most user friendly and easy way to get hold of the television series.

The reactions from the audience have been extremely positive. More than a hundred comments on the article announcing the experiment (Norwegian) express solid gratitude and people that are impressed by the move.

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation will keep on with experiments like these and try to make more content available through this technology in addition to the more traditional channels of streaming, podcasts and DVD sales.

Direct link to the RSS-feed with the torrents: nordkalotten365.rss

Links to the torrens:

NB! New version of episode 1. With better quality and hopefully with no errors in the file.

Episode 1: Nordkalotten365.E01.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

Episode 2: Nordkalotten365.E02.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

Episode 3: Nordkalotten365.E03.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

Episode 4: Nordkalotten365.E04.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

Episode 5: Nordkalotten365.E05.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

Episode 6: Nordkalotten365.E06.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

Episode 7: Nordkalotten365.E07.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

Episode 8: Nordkalotten365.E08.1024×576.H264.NRK.mp4.torrent

That’s all episodes. Download and enjoy. And please seed the file to support this experiment.

Editorial note: This is an English version of the Norwegian article we published yesterday, as a convenience for international readers. See also our other English article; «How to get a bigger screen on Nokia N95 than iPhone».

If you’re curious about NRKbeta, here’s our English about-page.