Patent ID: 7716710

Claim:
A method of distributing a motion picture to multiple theaters in a region via wireless communication links having limited bandwidth, the method comprising, in order: increasing downlink bandwidth in the wireless communication links leading to initial seed theaters; transmitting chunks of the motion picture via the wireless communication links to the initial seed theaters; decreasing the downlink bandwidth in the wireless communication links; and directing the theaters to share the chunks among each other, so that all of the theaters receive all of the chunks of the motion picture, wherein directing the theaters to share the chunks among each other so that all of the theaters receive all of the chunks of the motion picture comprises directing the theaters to begin BitTorrent swarming with each other, to share the chunks in pieces with each other wherein each theater has a computer system with a BitTorrent client, and wherein directing the theaters to begin BitTorrent swarming with each other comprises sending to each theater a control signal directing the BitTorrent client at the theater to turn on a BitTorrent broadcast function, so that the BitTorrent clients at the other theaters can then learn what pieces of the chunks are available to obtain from other theaters' BitTorrent clients.