A beta version of The Venice Project launched today. It is the Internet TV start-up from Kazaa and Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.
TechCrunch first got wind of the project in October.
“We set out to try to merge the best of TV and the best of the Internet and I think we have just taken a big step on a long journey,” said Friis today on his blog. “For a few months we have been quietly testing with a small circle of people. Now, we’re going to expand that circle – with more and more people getting invited. If you want to take it for a spin, get an invitation from an existing beta tester. The next months will bring many additional product features both on the end user and content provider side of things. And, importantly, more and more content. What you’ll see now is a preview of some of the categories of content you will find.”
GigaOm is reporting that early beta testers were not impressed, saying the site has a “bad interface, no text description of what the buttons mean, [and the] quality of video goes up and down very much.”
“We set out to try to merge the best of TV and the best of the Internet and I think we have just taken a big step on a long journey”
They merged sports and porn? Sounds intriguing.
Vaporware?
When you don’t tell what your product is about, either it’s vaporware or it’s the next revolution.
Given the odds, I take the first definition.
LOL @ #1
The interfaces in the screenshots from Gigaom remind me of Swarm and Stack from labs.digg.com, for some reason…
Either way, Friis knows how to make viral, hugely successful projects, so Im gonna bet that in a few months, after all the bugs are ironed out, this thing will be big.
so is it better than youtube?
well i think for a beta the site i not totaly finnished. I guess they are waiting to see the reactions of the people.. and what people expect out of it.. There should be a bunch of functions coming around .. i mean the creater of both kazaa and skype .. theyre not stupid.. but i do think this project is before its time.. The world is not ready for a TV on the NET thing yet.. i mean people just got accustomed to sites like youtube metcafe etc.. and it will take a couple a months before this project will be actual for the people. by that time i guess google or yahoo already on the hunch. so they better keep it up..
I hope its better than YouTube and offers higher quality content.
O.K I’m watching video of Green Day on the Venice Project as I type on my Laptop and the video quality is’nt the best Ive seen from p2p video but its watchable and there are ads that pop up about every 10 minutes of about 10-30 seconds in length . .
LX Systems (Peer Impact) and Gridnetworks do p2p video better at the moment .
The UI is what makes will make TVP stand out from other clients
The UI is full screen with lots of transparency effects and very DVR like, if you poke around the menus you will find lots of features .
The reason they extended the closed beta is so they can work on the p2p side of things and get some scale then I’m sure they will improve the video also as they improve the delivery system .
The minimum requirements to run The Venice project
* Pentium 4 processor, 1GHz
* 512Mb or more RAM.
* A modern video card with DirectX support and at least 32Mb of VRAM.
* About 500 MB free disk space; The Venice Project™ software is a 12 MB download, expanding to 40-45 MB on disk. The remainder is used as a cache.
Broadband/ADSL (1Mbit/s downstream, 512Kbit/s upstream recommended, although lower speeds may well work)
I, for one, wouldn’t want to bet against these guys. They’ve delivered pretty consistently.
has anyone checked out http://www.showstash.com it is a collection of tv shows popular ones Family Guy, Simpsons, and other popular tv shows…
they delivered a wonky p2p client full of fake files and slow downloads compared to napster and edonkey, they delivered a mediocre softphone that somehow got purchased for 2.6 billion, and now they deliver some kind of youtube thing…only without the content, and with the p2p suckness for delivery. what will they think of next? im sure it will be a smashing success
I’ve been following this project over the past week, doing a lot of reading … having tested a lot of software over the years, this appears to be a promising effort.
I’ve got some video plans and TVP seems like a good candidate to launch some great content on. Looking forward to receiving a token to try things out.
I love them.
I think the founders of skype should concentrate on getting the basics of their existing product up to scratch. The Skype presence system is sub-standard and underminds skype as a messaging platform. Sorry if I’m particularly sensitive to this issue it is only because my service (messagr.com) relies heavily on the skype presence system to work. How are we to innovate, progress and build new services when the existing ones don’t work?!
New Products by the Hour, Happy Browsing Variety.
I don’t get it. If this succeeds, yet again these clowns will have violated the first to market principle. If its not live TV, its youtube…so how can they possibly displace that? If it is live tv, its http://www.tvunetworks.com, which is both public and illegal (I would imagine)…of course, that hasn’t stopped these guys before. If its clips of tv shows, then welcome back to 1997.
It would be nice if being an entrepreneur on the net meant more than eventually deciding to release a project riding the coat tails of existing success. But clearly, these guys are proof its just that: kazaa, skype and now this are not original, not that good, and yet wildly successful. Open your eyes you mush-headed people!
Hope it could really bring some new ideas in the crowded online video field. TV+Internet has been talked for so many years, but never get really popular.
-Mike
Tech Tutorials: http://www.hotcoding.com
Hello. I’m experienced user & could be a good beta tester. Please send
me invitation token, if it possible. Thanks in advance!
azoulai@gmail.com