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

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

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    1. Re:56k Modems? by Duds · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I doubt it'll work on a C64 either.

      Sometimes you just have to accept that the cool new thing MIGHT just need technology from this decade.

  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).

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  3. Content? by moonbender · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This has been on Slashdot a couple of times before. I'm wondering where they'll get the content from. In fact, I'm not sure who sources the content in a technical sense. Since it's those guys, I'd assume the source is a peer, and not a central server. Or is it a central server, with peers just helping with the distribution?

    Anyway, they'll have a hard time delivering a TV like experience without TV like content. Purely YouTube style short movies won't cut it. Maybe they're building on the peers redistributing copyrighted content, but that didn't work out to well in the end for Kazaa.

    Maybe they'll convince movie/TV studios to distribute their content, but what's in it for them? Ads?

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    1. 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.

  4. 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

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    "I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
  5. 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.
  6. 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".....

  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. ;-)