Joost Totally Explained

Everything about Joost totally explained

Joost (like "juiced") is a system for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web using peer-to-peer TV technology, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa).
Joost began development in 2006. Working under the code name "The Venice Project", Zennström and Friis assembled teams of some 150 software developers in about six cities around the world, including New York, London, Leiden and Toulouse. According to Zennström at a 25 July 2007 press conference about Skype held in Tallinn, Estonia, Joost has signed up more than a million beta testers and is on track for an end-of-year launch.
The teams are currently in negotiations with FOX networks. It has signed up with Warner Music, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Productions (Indianapolis 500, IndyCar Series) and production company Endemol for the beta. In February 2007, Viacom entered into a deal with the company to distribute content from its media properties, including MTV Networks, BET and film studio Paramount Pictures.

Technology

The program is based on P2PTV technology and is expected to deliver (relaying) near-TV resolution images. It turns a PC into an instant on-demand TV without any need for additional set top box. News updates, discussion forums, show ratings, and multi-user chat sessions (often linked to the active stream/channel) are made possible through the use of semi-transparent widget overlays.
The current version of the software is based on XULRunner and the audio management re-uses the ZAP Media Kit. The peer to peer layer comes from the Joltid company, which also provided the peer to peer layer of Skype. The video playback utilizes the CoreCodec, CoreAVC H.264 video decoder.
Joost soft launched its Widget API on August 29th 2007 under a non-copyleft open source license and encourages third party developers to create tools for its TV 2.0 platform.

Financing

Joost development

As co-owners of Skype, Friis and Zennström received part of a $2.6 billion cash payment when eBay acquired Skype in 2005, which easily covered the development and marketing cost of their Joost venture. Just a week after launching the service, the founders announced that they'd raised an additional $45 million. Sequoia Capital, which backed Yahoo, Google and YouTube; Index Ventures, an early investor in Skype; Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong tycoon; and CBS, the US media group, have all taken “small minority” stakes in the start-up. Viacom is also understood to be among the partners, although the nature of its backing hasn't been disclosed.

Content distribution

As opposed to streaming technology in which all clients get the feed from the server, P2P TV technology differs in the sense that the servers serve only a handful of clients; each of the clients in turn propagate the stream to more downstream clients and so on. This moves the distribution costs from the channel owner to the user.
The Joost service is ad-supported, with advertising analogous to that shown on traditional TV, according to former CEO Fredrik de Wahl. Joost has 40 advertisers, including Sony Pictures, BMW, and Sprite. Aside from injected video-advertisements, it serves additional interactive advertisements via overlays and short pop-ups that are clickable. As this is visible related to the content shown, it isn't a surprise that Joost sends regular data back to ad-servers via port 11208, a fact that's disclosed in legalese to users in the end-user license agreement.

Availability

As of March 2008, the Joost software is in an open beta stage. Joost requires Windows XP or Vista; or Mac OS X (10.4 and later) on an Intel Mac. An invitation is no longer required.
There is no Linux, or Mac OS X on PowerPC, support at this time. It was possible to get Joost running through WINE when Joost was at version 0.10.x, but since that version is no longer supported on any operating system, this can no longer be done.

Programming content

Viacom, Inc., and Joost entered into a content provider agreement for the Joost platform on February 20, 2007. Under the agreement, divisions of Viacom (including MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures) will license their "television and theatrical programing" to Joost. This came shortly after Viacom requested 100,000 potentially infringing videos to be removed from YouTube.com, which showed a preference by Viacom for the Joost platform over YouTube.
Joost also currently has licensing agreements in place with Ministry of Sound TV, Aardman Animation, Warner Music, the production company Endemol, Fremantle Media, RDF Media, Diversion Media, CBS and CenterStaging's rehearsals.com. On May 1, 2007, Joost signed a deal to distribute NHL content, including full game replays of the Stanley Cup Finals, and vintage games.
Much of the content on Joost is restricted to users in the United States of America, due to international licensing arrangements.

Further Information

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