www.joost.com

Joost in time

So what is it? Quite simply, Joost turns your PC into an instant, on-demand TV. No set top box is required.
There's really three parts to the technology. Joost operates a server farm to cache the video, manage seeding, and maintain QoS, but the idea is that much of the content resides on people's own PCs.
Like Bittorrent it takes advantage of your largely under-utilized uplink. The video is received over a proprietary DRM connection, using encryption of Joost's own devising. Thirdly, there's a Mozilla-based client, for advertisers to develop commercials or marketing tools, and software developers to create their on screen widgets. It comes with a chat client, but examples of Joost widgets include giving clips ratings, and noticeboards.
Because it runs on a PC (Windows now, Mac and Linux to come) applications could include anything that's permitted to access the host's services. deWahl cited one example, custom remote control app for a phone, similar to Salling's splendid Clicker program.
From the outset of our demo, it was clear Joost has cracked some fundamentals. TV runs instantly, full screen and at high quality - there's no lag from activating the TV software to getting something to watch.
It runs in a window too, of course, but there's no messy furniture. And unlike Bill Gates' whacky vision of TV, it isn't a split screen with one half taken up by text ads. The on-screen widgets are discreet, alpha-blended overlays created using SVG and HTML.
So right away, this is YouTube done properly. The chat widget takes us into familiar Interactive TV territory -you can rate clips, chat with friends, and so on.