Joost to bring P2P IPTV to the masses

26th January 2007

The founders of the VoIP company Skype and peer-to-peer network Kazaa have launched a new company called Joost, which they say will revolutionise TV viewing by allowing the masses to view TV over the Internet using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology.

With P2P live streaming, users download parts of the stream from other users rather than downloading the stream directly from the broadcaster using the traditional 'unicasting' technology, where the total server bandwidth equals the bandwidth of the stream multiplied by the number of users. P2P, like Internet multicasting, therefore vastly reduces the server bandwidth that the broadcaster needs to provide in order to distribute its content over the Internet, which allows the broadcaster to provide higher quality streams that would be unfeasibly expensive using unicasting.

The BBC's iPlayer (which seems to be the new name for what has previously been called the iMP (interactive media player) and MyBBCPlayer) will also use P2P for its 'TV catch-up' service and it will also presumably use P2P live streaming to deliver the BBC's TV channels and radio stations.