The Newest TV Service on the Block

There is a new TV service in town now. The world’s first broadcast quality Internet TV service, Joost, is being launched by the founders of the Internet telephony service Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom.

From Joost’s offices in London, CEO Frederik de Wahl said that the new service would be a different experience from all other current Internet TV offerings. He said, “It is full-screen, broadcast quality, you've got instant channel flipping, and interactivity - a viewer can come to us and get all their TV needs.”

The current programming of the new TV service includes sports, music, and documentaries. However, the CEO said when the full launch happens over the next few months, users would be able to make use of a wide variety of programs, and that the content would be definitely more impressive.

This is not the first offering from Friis and Zennstrom. They are Internet entrepreneurs who have also been the men behind the popular Internet music download application Kazaa. It uses the FastTrack protocol, and was launched at around the same time that Napster was closing down. Friis and Zennstrom sold Kazaa to Sharman Networks, an Australian company. Users commonly use Kazaa to download MP3 files from the Internet. Kazaa has had a controversial life, and has often been the target of many a copyright-related lawsuit in the past.

Another popular application with the Friis and Zennstrom touch is Skype, a peer-to-peer Voice over IP (VoIP) network. Though in stiff competition with other similar rival offerings like SIP, H.323, and IAX, Skype is immensely popular among users, and offers both free as well as paid services.

Friis and Zennstrom subsequently sold Skype to eBay in 2005 for £1.3 billion. They have channeled some of this money into the new offering, which they call The Venice Project.

Currently, there is a 6,000-strong team testing the service, and the duo said it would be able to offer its services to millions of users simultaneously once it became totally operational.