[Bug 339772]

[Chris Hubick]

(In reply to Comsultia, Ltd. from comment #99)
> would be nice have supported torrent protocol in HTML5 video tag:
> <video src="torrent://">

I would like to see this too, but also supporting the new "magnet:"
style torrent links.

Discussion proposal, answering questions raised by bug 203571 comment
13:

I think, regardless of protocol, referencing *any* file over a certain
size within a video (or img, etc) element could result in the opening of
the download manager, with that content being added to the active
downloads (giving the user some opportunity to cancel the operation),
ie, what happens if someone does <video
src="http://2_gigabyte_video.webm"> on a HTTP/1.0 server that doesn't
support range requests?  I would expect any large content being
downloaded could be shown in the download manager and also play within
the page element as that data becomes available.  I would expect such
downloads to be automatically be terminated if the user navigates away
from the download-spawning page.

I think, again regardless of protocol, the Firefox video UI displayed
within the page has/needs some way to provide status for buffering,
streaming stalls, etc, and the page level torrent UI could be handled
using the same mechanism.  I don't think elongated startup display times
would be a problem as long as the user is provided status information
("connecting to server/tracker...", "downloading/buffering...",
"estimated time till playback begins: unknown/1 minute", or some such).

Similarly, I would expect referencing a torrent file from a video tag to
result the download manager being opened and having that torrent added
to it's active downloads.  I would expect the embedded torrent client to
have user prefs for seeding/sharing/ratio/lifespan, like any other
torrent download software.  I would expect the embedded client to be
patched with the ability to attempt to download chunks somewhat in order
(ie, try to download the beginning of the video first).

If there is a 10MB video on a page, regardless of whether you watch the
whole thing or just the first 10%/1MB before navigating away from the
page, I would expect the torrent client to seed the content you did
download until you reach the regularly configured share ratio.  And,
again, I would not expect any remaining content to be downloaded after
you navigate away from the page, unless you resume the downloaded
manually within the manager, perhaps so you can save the content upon
completion for later viewing.

Video content is becoming increasingly popular on the web, and users
today are confined to big providers like YouTube who can afford the
servers and bandwidth required to support distributing such content.
This restricts the ability of small individuals to create and distribute
large multimedia content.  While embedded torrent support might not be
as seamless/ideal as other mechanisms, it does give *everyone* the
freedom to become their own YouTube, and I hear that's what Firefox and
the Open Web are all about.

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Title:
  Firefox download manager doesn't handle torrents

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