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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.'"

7 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. 56k Modems? by NaeRey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will it work on those too? Or it's another "5Gb Internet connection needed" ?

    --
    http://naerey.switch-case.org
  2. Bittorrent and the BBC by hkwatergypsy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With so many different delivery systems starting to get good, legal content and both the big tech companies and the content producers joining the fight this should be interesting. Now if only we could get around the DRM that limits most content to windows machines.

  3. Re:it makes sense... by Constantine+XVI · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And Skype itself was an obvious progression from P2P media transfer.

    These are the same guys that did Kazaa.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype for the curious

    --
    "I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
  4. Nothing to get juiced about by camperdave · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Skype Founders Develop Media Streaming Tech
    Maybe it's just my imagination kicking in... but don't we already have media streaming already?

    When Skype developed their phone/IM software, voice over IP was in its infancy. Skype was leading edge stuff. However, the internet has had video streaming for a while now. I don't see how this is going to fly, unless they're cutting some deals with the studios to get some content, or have some spiffy new compression algorithm.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  5. More reasons for Net Admins to curse by Danathar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You think skype uses bandwidth, wait till users using this get on your corporate network and get selected as "super nodes".....

  6. Re:Content? by WhoDaCapFits · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They're actively creating partnerships with tv networks and movie studios, in exchange for a split of ad revenue. I actually work for one of the TV networks they're in talks with.

  7. I'm a beta tester but... by OneInEveryCrowd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    unfortunately the non-disclosure agreement I clicked through prevents me from discussing it. All I can say is that I'm generally happy with it but won't be giving up anime fansubs anytime soon, especially the faux-720p h264 ones....

    Sorry wish I could say more. ;-)