Having been following this WebTV technology since the days of their codenamed “Venice Project”, it is interesting to see this WebTV software no longer invite only and finally being relased to the public domain.

http://www.joost.com/

Backed by the same guys behind Skype and Kazaa – and employing the majority of sales staff that originally launched Massive – the credentials are indeed good. Confirmed equally by the number of people catching the hype and jumping on board such as MTV, Paramount and Warners.

Jury is stil out if Joost will become the defacto delivery method of choice due to their clever marketing, or if yet another technology player to compete with the growing list of distribution software out there, including Apple TV and BBC’s £130M iPlayer, will just leave the consumer overwhelmed with a mind-boggling choice of player options.

Added to the fact of dated licensing restricting content to local territories is a huge barrier for TV via the web, and throws up all sorts of questions regarding commercialisation models currently in place - even more so when behind-the-scenes to take control of the distribution platform actually ends up dictating consumer choice of content - all a far cry from the open-source visionary days of Tim Berners-Lee!

 Another example of divergence in the converging world…