Joost: Let the Reviews Begin

With a fresh new set of beta invitations out, reviews of Joost begin.

Wired:

"It's really pretty simple," Friis says, shifting into mantra mode. "We've taken the best things about television and added the best things from the Internet."

The vision: universal TV, running on a hybrid P2P platform -- millions of exquisitely networked PCs fortified with traditional video servers. Free to viewers who download the player app. Friendly to content owners, thanks to industrial-strength encryption. Delightful to advertisers, adding pinpoint targeting to their all-time favorite medium. Everyone's a winner!

Van Gulik estimates that 80 percent of the project's software comes from existing libraries of open source code. Engineers culled the pieces they needed and stitched them together into gnarly databases and backend servers, plus the crucial 10-Mbyte app that runs on users' PCs. "Without Mozilla, Ubuntu, and a lot of other public code," van Gulik says, "we'd still be scratching our heads."

"We are going to be the single most legal platform on the Net," says David Clark, the New York-based advertising director, formerly with MTV Networks. "The entire ecosystem falls apart when people don't get paid."

frantic industries:

"The installation is simple and smooth. Joost was behaving very nicely and it never crashed or stopped responding. I’ve noticed that when playing a video, Joost, on average, eats up around 35% of CPU time which is not that bad, but it’s also not negligible, as my Opteron 144 overclocked to 2.8 GHz is a relatively speedy beast.

The icons are big and easy to hit, and while the scrolling may be a little slow at some points, it’s perfect for using on the TV screen.

The actual quality of the videos varied quite a bit, but it was definitely much better than anything on YouTube or Google Video.

One of the most important features of Joost is the support for plugins.

The application works great, looks ok, and if you got a decent internet connection, you’ll have no problems using it. Its success will depend on the amount and quality of content, and of course, ultimately, the success of Joost’s ad-based business model."

Joost: The Venice Project

"Yesterday we were The Venice Project... today we are Joost!

While we're still in beta, we hope that Joost will become synonymous with the best of TV and the best of the Web."

Fredrik de Wahl

TechCrunch:

"A tip from reader Joost Schreve led us to the domain name Joost.com: if you click the “cancel” button multiple times an unformatted web page pops up with information about the Venice Project. We have subsequently confirmed that this is the actual launch name of the company."

NewTeeVee:

"Finally, the online television startup from the founders of Skype has a production name: Joost. Of course, the premature hype streak lives on, as that URL is still password protected.

We have some new screenshots below the jump."

Janus Friis:

"Coming up with a new name for a new company can be a quite strange experience - it takes a totally disproportionate amount of time, it is hardly scientific and it inspires some very heated, emotional debates. But there you have it. And while it does not mean anything now we think it will come to mean great quality Internet TV the way it should be."

The Venice Project: Industry Observations

The building buzz around The Venice Project continues.

The Wall Street Journal: (subscription required)

"Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom roiled the music industry with their first venture and the telecom world with their next. Now, the Scandinavian entrepreneurs behind the KaZaA file-sharing software and Skype Internet calling are backing an online video start-up that could shake up the television and cable industries as well."

NewTeeVee:

"And while the glam duo might hog the headlines, the task of making the Venice Project a reality falls on the shoulders of Fredrik de Wahl, a lanky Swede with a quiet demeanor who has been a cohort of Messrs. Zennstrom and Friis for more than half a decade.

He explains that just like a “Skylib” enables voice and chat services on the Joltid’s p2p layer, The Venice Project runs on a media streaming library the company has nick named Anthill. The company uses a H.264 codec licensed from CoreCodec, a US-based company, much in the manner Global IP Sound provided the voice codecs for Skype. “CoreCodec is the best of breed H.264 video codec and is efficient and has the high quality we need,” de Wahl says.

Running on top of these core technologies is a highly modified version of Mozilla browser, which makes it easy for the company to port its client to any operating system – Mac, Linux or even mobile operating systems. The user interface is built using Adobe’s SVG technology. In other words, it’s a Web-enabled hybrid application, much like the brilliant Songbird meta-music client.

“I think very soon people can start writing plug-ins for the Venice Project,” he says."

PaidContent:

"So what is The Venice Project? A code name for a service that would allow viewers to watch high-quality streaming professional video (movies, TV, etc.) using p2p instead of a central server and meshing TV with web capabilities like tagging and search. The plan calls for working with content providers to distribute legit content—no, this isn’t the first p2p effort to do that—and, as the FAQ says, to make it “as TV-like as we can, with programmes, channels and adverts.” They also want to mesh TV and web in terms of revenue—advertising with rev sharing."

InfoWorld:

"The Venice Project is almost certain to worry numerous network operators in the U.S. already concerned about their broadband pipes becoming plugged with a range of new video download services. A proliferation of these services could add fuel to the nation's already overheated debate on network neutrality."

Om Looks at Venice (from afar)

Om hears a little about the Venice Project: "Someone who got to use the service wasn’t very kind. “To sum up, very bad interface, no text description of what the buttons mean, quality of video goes up and down very much, not really much better than a good flash file that you size up 250%.”

Here is one of the screen shots OM found - go see more and bigger.

The Venice Project, sort of Live

Janus says the project is live:

"We set out to try to merge the best of TV and the best of the Internet and I think we have just taken a big step on a long journey. For a few months we have been quietly testing with a small circle of people. Now, we’re going to expand that circle – with more and more people getting invited. If you want to take it for a spin, get an invitation from an existing beta tester.

The next months will bring many additional product features both on the end user and content provider side of things. And, importantly, more and more content. What you’ll see now is a preview of some of the categories of content you will find."

The Venice Project Homepage.

See the offical blog here.

The Venice Project

Coming soon to a computer monitor in front of you! TV unleashed by the guys that brought us KaZaA and Skype.

Janus Friis:

"What are we trying to do with Venice?

It’s simple, really — we are trying to bring together the best of TV with the best of the Internet. We think TV is one of the most powerful, engaging mass medias of all time. People love TV, but they also hate TV. They love the (sometimes…) amazing storytelling, the richness, the quality itself. But they hate the linearness, the lack of choice, the lack of basic things like being able to search. And wholly missing is everything that we are now accustomed to from the Internet: tagging, recommendations, choice, and so on… TV is 507 channels and nothing on and we want to help change that!"

Bruno Giussani:

"So, to summarize:

• streaming peer-to-peer television (near-TV quality)
• free to the user (just download the client software)
• ad-supported (with ad targeting)
• deals with content providers (revenue-share)
• time-shifted
• searchable
• with "social TV" features (tagging, recommendations, etc)"

Om Malik: Interview responses from Janus Friis

"Like Skype, The Venice Project is simple - you download and you get free television. There is nothing complicated and simple. Our software is already in beta, and we are doing some bug squashing right now. You can sign-up and we are inviting more people to our beta program. It is near television quality, and it needs about one megabit per second.

We are building an ad-based system, and it is close to the television model. We will do revenue share with the content providers. With our system, people can be targeted with the right kind of ads. We are respecting the copyrights. We will reveal more details about the technology soon."

TechCrunch:

"The time is right for this. Consumer demand is there and the networks seem ready to take the step. Apple has secured rights to over 220 television shows and sells them on iTunes. YouTube’s market valuation has been set at $1.65 billion by Google, showing the value of simple show clips on the web. And the networks have shown that they are open to trying new distribution options through the Internet. If Niklas and Janus have been successful in securing rights to network shows, we’re about to be introduced to something which is very likely to result in me canceling my cable television subscription once and for all."