I was one of the few that had the initial alpha invite and can admit the system was nice, but even I was hesitant to use it. WIth sites like Hulu, there’s no reason to waste our limited bandwidth in helping stream that content to others. Joost was a good idea, that failed in execution. The web videos isn’t all that great either, but it’s a definite step up.

Right now I’m using a mixture of Hulu + Surf the Channel (http://www.surfthechannel.com) and Free tube (http://www.freetube.us.tc) to solve my whoes. I’m more into webisodes and unique content like that then commercial tv shows which let’s face it are on the decline, I don’t think CBS/NBC will be happy considering that they just can’t profit off that stuff since it beats out their content, regardless of what celebrities they troll out on their shows.

Also check out http://www.joost.uni.cc for a summary of the hype and workings of the Joost p2p program. Very interesting stuff.

@Kate, I completely empathize with you. Here you have this idiot but famous blogger with equally stupid blog following (which includes me). The problem with Michael is that he simply doesn’t think twice before posting. I mean no-client doesn’t mean NO P2P.. you *can* have P2P on flash as other posters have mentioned.. But then its too much to except from a “tech blogger” like Michael who spends most of his time dog-fighting with his equally stupid french buddy.

Seriously Michael, these are bad signs. I follow you coz you were the first.. Stop the stupidity or else u ll go into oblivion. Trust me on this.

It is the equivalent of a Television network building out a Tier-1 backbone infrastructure.

If Joost were to succeed at a content distribution portal–which requires expertise in content licensing, user acquisition, branding, playback/navigation experience– they would simply go to a vendor for the best p2p infrastructure. Furthermore, why should Joost spend all of their $$, focus, resources on building out the infrastructure, if they don’t have the content or the users that can use it??!!

Bottom line is that start-ups have a tough enough time getting one business right. It made no sense (even at the beginning) for Joost to go after two businesses, especially with all of the barriers that P2P presents (like having to get users to install a client vs. just simply clicking and streaming).

I’m pretty surprised that Niklaus Zenstrom went down this path. He’s an entrepreneur I respect and who typically doesn’t make these kinds of mistakes.

(saw this in a portfolio.com article a year ago:

Previously, all Joost users had to download and install special software. “The download may seem like a small barrier,” says Brad Hunstable, co-founder of user-generated video site Ustream, “but it’s a huge mental barrier.”

http://www.port...t-YouTube#page2

Hulu is great, but it’s U.S. only.

Just because most readers of techcrunch live in the U.S., don’t let the echo chamber replace awareness of the world beyond your borders.

We would love to see Hulu in Canada, but no dice. So, we use Joost…and we are just a tiny little segment of non-Hulu viewing eyeballs.

It’s impossible for an 3rd party developer to do it in actionscript is what I meant to say. Yes, Adobe can do whatever the hell it wants with their platform, and yes, Stratus allows *one* form of P2P. But if you look closer, it’s only for 1:1 p2p and is designed for collaboration-type applications. To do anything beyond this, you’d have to modify the flash engine, which defeats the purpose of using flash as you would then have a branched distro.

I knew it!

Anyway, burning a large part on those $45M on specific P2P client, then plug-in research & optimization is a total waste of money.

In less than 2 years, Adobe will have come up with P2P ability in its Flash plug-in. More than 99% computers shipped with Flash.

Why would you bother of even think of it? Let it happen and optimize the way it will work. In the meantime, go for streaming/prog. download and tweak things to make them less costly.

That’s for sure what Google/YouTube has been doing (even if they still could push things a lil more)!

regards
aarthabenn
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