Puffbox

Ireland's ice hockey team is currently competing in the world championships. The international game is separated into graded groups, and Ireland are in the basement batch with the likes of Luxembourg, Iceland and Turkey. Understandably since there isn't actually an ice rink in (the Republic of) Ireland.

The games, taking place in Reykjavik, are being broadcast live in video, using a technology I hadn't come across before. Octoshape is a plugin for Windows Media Player (and others), which brings peer-to-peer distribution to media streaming. And the results are impressive – as long as your machine can handle the memory impact (up to 40MB in my experience).

As the Danish company claims, it stands to make video streaming affordable for small-scale broadcasters and producers… like, in this case, 'minority' sports. Forget all the coverage of Ashley Highfield's latest 'BBC 2.0' vision statement: this is where the real cutting edge lies.

Things aren't looking good for the Irish, having lost 6-0 to the (previously) bottom-ranked Armenia – come on you boys in green! You can see their remaining games, or test out the technology, from this IIHA page or Octoshape's site. The tournament continues until Saturday.