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Skype Founders Develop Media Streaming Tech

Posted by Zonk on from the what's-a-joost dept.

[RnP]Venom writes "It appears that after selling Skype to Ebay, Skype founders Janus and Niklas haven't been resting on their laurels. As reported by ZDNet, and the International Herald Tribune, they have been hard at work developing a new TV streaming application called Joost. With as little as 6,000 people currently testing the project details are a bit scarce, but if it does remotely as well as their Phone/IM success, it could be a real treat. From the IHT article: 'Joost may eventually try to move onto television sets, but the company said it will initially focus on making it easier and more fun to watch TV on a computer. Similar to the Skype model, Joost users will download free software -- this time to help them browse for channels and clips they're interested in. One of the company's executives, Henrik Werdelin, said in a videotaped interview that Joost aims to keep the quality of television programming, its picture quality and its ease of use, but improve other aspects.'"

9 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. AKA The Venice Project by AnriL · · Score: 2, Informative

    They just changed the name from "The Venice Project" to Joowhatever. Not much new developement to write about.

  2. Sounds like... by truthsearch · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds like Democracy. Except Democracy is an open platform (I assume this new thing will not be).

    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
  3. Bandwidth Usage by emil10001 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The following is off the Joost FAQ Page (requires a login ID):

    Joost(TM) is a streaming video application, and so uses a relatively high amount of bandwidth per hour. In one hour of viewing, approximately 320Mb data will be downloaded and 105Mb uploaded, which means that it will exhaust a 1Gb cap in 10 hours. Also, the application continues to run in the background after you close the main window. For this reason, if you pay for your bandwidth usage per megabyte or have your usage capped by your ISP, you should be careful to always exit Joost(TM) client completely when you are finished watching it.
  4. Re:Bittorrent and the BBC by roger6106 · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the Joost FAQ:

    Does Joost(TM) work on the Mac or Linux?

    We're working hard on a native Macintosh Intel version and expect it to be available in the next few months. Currently the application works fine under Bootcamp but not under Parallels; it needs to access the graphics processing unit (GPU) for some of its operations, and Parallels does not support that at the moment.

    A Linux version is also in the works.

  5. Re:Finally registered... by benjaminchoate · · Score: 2, Informative

    I still will never trust the developers of Kazaa. Spyware/Malware bundlers just cannot be trusted, ever.

    Kazaa did not contain spyware/malware until it was bought by Sharman Networks. Skype is a very well made program. Can you use Roger Wilco to call a landline? Can you get a phone number assigned to Roger Wilco and call someone on their computer? How about popping into chat mode and sending a file or url?

    You don't have to love them or use their products, but IMO they have been putting out some very good, easy to use products and deserve some credit for innovative ideas, and their ability to take those ideas and turn them into a really smooth piece of tech.

  6. Re:I'm a beta tester but... by mgb68 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm in the same situation with the non-disclosure but I'd say that the content is lacking.

  7. Re:56k Modems? by dirkx · · Score: 2, Informative

    Works swimmingly well on an EDVO modem stuck into an IBM ThinkPad in New York City. Dw.

  8. Actually works very well by porttikivi · · Score: 2, Informative

    The beta is high quality. Suddenly I can watch a dozen channels of nearly TV quality content, which currently is strictly per-episode on-demand P2P streaming (more scalable not-on-demand P2P "multicast channel" type streaming will come only later). And there are ads, a business model and commercial TV programs (Fith Gear car shows and GONG anime being the best ones). Picture quality is surprisingly good, so is tolerance of bad connections. Compared to podcasting it is really fun to be able to access everything RIGHT NOW! In practice it beats Democracy every possible way. The content comes primarily from P2P to other clients, but Joost company has seeding "Long Tail Servers" to gurantee the availability of even the less popular streams.

    --
    Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
  9. Joost is big on open source by microbrewer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Joost is based on Mozilla's XUL Runner framework .

    Dirk-Willem van Gulik from Apache the Foundation is the CTO .

    Some of the Open source tech used

    Apache, Cocoon, Dojo, Jena, Mozilla, RDF, SVG, XML, XUL

    http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/
    http://ant.apache.org/
    http://wicket.sourceforge.net/
    http://lucene.apache.org/