[Istanbul] What’s on your disk other than your own data and applications? Media files, right? Put.io as which we’ve covered before, is a new kind of storage service that eliminates the process of uploading media files to a server, something that usually takes hours, by proactively fetching them from their sources and putting them in your online space. It’s like a golden retriever crossbred with Dropbox.
The service was in private beta for the last 6 months and has had huge demand for invites. Now they’ve set their prices and have launched officially.
A basic account with 10GB’s of storage space and 10GB’s of bandwidth costs $4.90. A pro account with 50GB’s of the same costs $9.90 and the 100GB Premium plan costs $19.90. If you need more bandwidth you can purchase extra traffic for 10 cents per GB.
With Put.io, you can transfer files found in the wild via Bittorrent, FTP, direct links or RapidShare to your account and make them ready to be consumed or shared with your friends. It also can watch RSS feeds for downloadable content and fetch files automatically, which turns your Put.io account into a sort of a TiVo for downloadable content.
Once you have some files over there, you can access them using any computer, iPhone, PS3 or soon even the disruptive new media center Boxee. iPhone users can access the site via the mobile version and convert retrieved videos to MP4 format in minutes to enjoy them on the go.
Because of the project’s exceptionally high hardware and bandwidth requirements, Put.io will have a certain number of slots available. The team wants to guarantee good download speeds for every user, therefore they will add more slots only as they add more hardware. Announcements for newly available slots will be sent out from their twitter profile.
Fetching from the bittorrent network or transferring files from non-paid sites to put.io is free. But when you fetch files from the so-called one-click hosting providers like RapidShare, the amount you’re fetching will be deducted from your monthly bandwidth quota.
Put.io is not offering this on their site, but the first 1000 Techcrunch readers can get one week’s worth of free trial accounts. Just click the link and grab yours: http://put.io/loves/techcrunch
Their future plans include adding support for more one-click hosting services, creating their own online video player plugin and generally making more formats consumable over the intenet. They are also finishing up a Boxee app and a public API.
Yes, music industry and other bodies will probably go crazy about this service. Yes, some may well use this to stream torrented movies. But of course, it’s perfectly possible to use the service for entirely legitimate means like storing videos of your family events. Welcome to the Internet. Imageshack (a US company) downloads torrents without apparent legal problems.
Putio has competitors like humyo.com and Binfire.com.
Then again, who knows if it’ll be legal in the UK after the disaster of the Digital Economy Act.
