The Venice Project: Internet TV Revolutionized

• December 24th, 2006 | IPTV, Streaming Video

A few days ago, an invite to beta test TVP (The Venice Project), finally arrived. TVP is the new brainchild of geniuses Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, who created the P2P (peer-to-peer) Kazaa (file sharing) and Skype (VoIP client). Under the terms of the beta test agreement, I cannot divulge much. But let me tell you what I can.

The beta only runs on Win XP, but others OSes will follow. The interface is unlike anything I’ve seen on Windows. But it is based on some of the newer web portals, reminiscent of but not identical to sites like PageFlakes in that there are movable components, which you can choose. But it’s still in beta and crashes a lot, at least for me. And for whatever reason, possibly due to necessarily long download times, I have yet to see any actual video content, despite trying all day long. That’s all I’m going to say, lest I lose my beta privileges.

Now, I’ve been waiting on this post and I’m glad I did. GigaOm published some screen shots (via TechCrunch), seemingly without permission - though TechCrunch published some as well. Apparently Om accessed someone else’s copy and says he was impressed. I don’t know why the video content doesn’t appear on my computer, but the cable connection in my area has been absurdly bad for about a week. But it obviously works; just not for me.