Next Skype video project unveiled

Can Skype do it again?



Hands On with Skype's Joost/Venice Project - AppScout

Skype's Internet TV project, formerly called The Venice Project, got its real name today: Joost. The video service is still in beta, but the Joost team says it will be more open than before, so if you've been waiting for an invitation, you can start holding your breath now (we didn't get ours until last week).

For those that haven't heard of this yet, Skype's video service has pretty high ambitions. It's not meant for grainy webcam videos, nor is it the place to find recent Daily Show clips. Joost is looking to make its mark with original content streamed with as little compression as possible, and to give regular ol' TV a real run for its money.

I took Joost for a test drive this morning, and it looks pretty slick besides the occasional beta bugs (for instance, it isn't working with IE or Safari right now for some reason). Joost uses a local video player client that interacts with the Web to stream videos using an H.264 video codec, and there's a modified Mozilla browser built over it all so the client will work with pretty much any OS.

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