Take BinTube for example. The Windows-only application looks more like your average media player than a complicated download client, and it offers a feature called “Usenet streaming”: Instead of waiting for all parts of a movie to be downloaded, it starts playing the video after receiving the first part, with downloads continuing in the background. Yes, I know — technically that’s “progressive downloading,” not “streaming.” Still, it’s light-years from what Usenet used to be.
BinTube is essentially a Usenet download client that hides all the unnecessary details from its users and integrates VLC to play pretty much any video format available for download. Archived videos are automatically unpacked, and videos are played with as little as 1 percent of total data downloaded. BinTube also offers a web-based Usenet index to make it easier to find and download files. Users can search for videos by title or scour through dozens of newsgroups to look for available downloads...
Read more of this story...
