Om Malik at GigaOM got his hands on The Venice Project, the new broadband peer to peer TV project being developed by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Of course, when I say "got his hands on" I mean for exactly 30 minutes. This was more of a sneak peak than anything, but we know a lot more about the project than we did a few days ago.
Currently the application runs only on Windows XP SP2. It takes just a moment to download and install. Once you load the program, it takes you to a page with some channels, staff picks, etc. The picture quality is apparently near-TV, and consumes about 250MB per hour. There is a lag when you switch channels.
The biggest problem appears to be lack of content. There's no "live" streaming material at the moment, and most of what exists is streaming content from the Venice Project servers. As Malik points out, Skype and Kazaa were two programs that were made for self-perpetuation. If you wanted to use Skype, it behooved you to get your friends on board. Same thing with Kazaa.
Unless Venice goes the YouTube user-generated video route, which doesn't seem to be the goal, it needs to strike some deals with major content providers. Nobody's going to watch a TV replacement if nothing's on. But while 250MB an hour may seem like a lot to ISPs, from a consumer standpoint that's some great video compression for streaming near-broadcast quality video over the net.
1. I'm the Director of Business Developement for www.BocaRaton.com and I would like to hear more about your tv programming. We've just loaded our first Newscast! for the South Florida Business Journal. We going to be adding in additional video content early next year. We're also airing www.FTLMODA.com Fashion Show LIVE on our Web site in January. So, it's great to hear that tv viewing is starting to move to the Web.
Regards,
Russell Spadaccini
Russell@BocaRaton.com
Posted at 10:46PM on Dec 21st 2006 by Russell Spadaccini