OK, so I shouldn’t be writing headlines (I toyed with ‘Joost in time’ but noticed The Register had beaten me to it). However despite my lack of copy writing skills, I did feel compelled to blog about Joost.

For those of you not familiar with this soon to launched IPTV service, it’s the latest brainchild of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the guys who brought you Kazaa and Skype.

That doesn’t guarantee it success, but it does mean that it’s likely to be extremely technically proficient, and take advantage of some lateral thinking in its development.

IPTV has been around for a while and continues to promise great things, but personally I’m yet to be convinced it’s a viable platform for me to be spending my spare time on.

The plus points both commercially and for the user are obvious; on-demand entertainment, contextual advertising, aggregation of small specialist audiences across national boundaries etc. etc.

Joost though seems to have combined this with some very obvious thinking, a nice interface and some great tech.

Firstly, if The Register is to be believed it delivers broadcast quality full screen pictures (so not YouTube then!). It’s also going to use a P2P model (Kazaa’s influence) to aid distribution.

But what I like is things like the chat module and ratings all on screen. While I’m not sure exactly how useable chat will be while watching an on-demand programme, I like the idea of mixing these elements up.

Finally they have signed up Endemol UK and Warner music Group to be involved in their beta, and that’s got to be good. As we’ve been talking to a whole load of TV production companies recently we know just how interested they are in finding new channels for their content. With broadcast quality output, Joost is bound to get some serious interest.

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