Friis is a Dane and Zennstrom a Swede - referred to by some as internet rock-stars. They had 2.6 billion dollars in their pockets after selling Skype to E-Bay and are using some of that money to get Joost™ off the ground.
In this Guardian Unlimited article, the founders say that when it is up and running, Joost™ viewers will have thousands of programs to choose from on up to 100,000 channels.
Joost™ uses H.264/MPEG-4 AVC digital compression to provide "near" high definition video.
The video distribution is based on the P2P (peer-to-peer) technology used by Kazaa where the network infrastructure is user PCs, rather than central servers.
According to this Wired article, "The goal is to render DVD-quality pictures -- no sudden freeze-ups or obvious artifacts -- at around 400 Kbps. (On a typical 500-Kbps home connection, that leaves headroom for the vital job of uploading to other peers.)"
The video is streamed, not downloaded to a user's computer - which attracts content providers concerned with illegal copying and distribution.
Joost™ currently has deals with Viacom to distribute video from MTV, BET and Paramount Pictures.
The service is free, and it's supported by one minute of individually targeted advertisements per hour vs. up to fifteen minutes per hour on conventional TV.
