8×8

‘ve been busy playing around with the new Joost Internet TV application, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. My first experience with P2P Internet TV was in 2006 during the World Cup, I used PPLive and PPStream. While they did the job, the interface was pretty brutal. You can think of the Joost application as the Apple Ipod of P2P TV, slick, slick slick!Another reason why at the time PPLive and PPStream were not that interesting to me compared with Joost is the content, since most of the content was for the Chinese or Korean market. The winner of the Internet TV application race will obviously be determined by the content that they provide. Even though Joost is still in Beta it has some quirky, punchy content that is definitely entertaining. Some highlights for me were the Gong channel that has some pretty funny Japanese Anime, Fab Channel for live concert recordings and they had a TV show from Alliance Atlantis, Total Recall 2070 that caught my attention. And of course the news is out that they did the deal with CBS, so thats pretty significant. Joost is currently free and supported by advertising. But not advertising in the traditional TV sense, I only experienced one ad that was 5-10 seconds when the show started or once in a while during the show.

I also tried Vuze which is snazzy interface for a pay service to get HD quality torrents that are protected under DRM. DRM is dead and nobody likes it including the guys at Azareus, so hopefully they will get around it soon. The big plus is they have done a deal with the BBC to carry their content. However all content on Vuze is regionally restricted (and to some degree on Joost too). This is a major negative, as they are currently not allowing me to watch the BBC in the Netherlands, while in the mean time I have 6 BBC channels on my digital cable service….

It will be exciting to track the developments as they unfold… but I’m left with one interesting thought. If I could watch PPLive and PPStream P2P TV that was seeded by the community. What is stopping us from writing an open source P2P Internet TV service that carries more Western content, where people can start seeding live shows from there digital TV services… that way the community would have access to all the content not just a subset of networks that did the deals with the InternetTV providers, and it would be region free…. it would be interesting to discuss at least the possibilities.