Official launch of Joost yesterday...

[BGonaSTICK]

The world’s first TV-quality online television network went on display at this week’s MIPCOM audiovisual trade show. The network, Joost, launched this month just ahead of a clutch of competitors that include Italy’s Babelgum, offers legal rather than pirated entertainment for free.

“The Internet will start off showing traditional entertainment but eventually users and content creators will use the capabilities of the Internet to create some amazing entertainment,” said Mike Volpi, who heads up Joost.

The TV and digital media industries are right to be concerned, experts said at MIPCOM this week, as no one really knows how the current explosion of new ways to watch and interact with television will evolve. But everyone remembers how the Internet quickly changed everyone’s lives.

Volpi said over two million users had already downloaded the Joost application needed to use the fledgling TV service, which has been recording more than 100,000 downloads a day since it started on 1 October. But “it’s early days,” Volpi cautioned, adding that the length of time users were staying on the channel varied enormously from region to region - though it was upwards of 20 minutes.

Volpi said Joost aimed to remain a free service funded by advertisements and hoped to attract more creative, interactive ads. As to content, he said users could look forward in the future to big-branded TV series as well as a vast library of older TV shows along with the mass of user-generated content on services like YouTube,

Source: AFP