The founders of Skype, who pioneered free voice over Internet phone calls using computers, are hoping to repeat the phenomenon with a broadband TV service. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis - who also established the music-sharing site Kazaa - came out of stealth mode Tuesday (Jan. 16) with what was formerly known as the ‘Venice Project’, and dubbed the service Joost. They describe the service as “a new way of watching TV on the Internet”. The service, which combines file-sharing software and broadcast television over the Internet, is expected to launch by June and is already undergoing private trials in a number of countries and with several content providers, including companies such as Dutch TV-production group Endemol and Warner Music. Some advertisers such as T-Mobile and chewing gum maker Wrigley are already backing the venture. Service will be free to users.

The backbone of what is now called Joost is a secure P2P streaming technology that allows content owners to bring TV-quality video and ease of use to a TV audience, though Zennstrom and Friis stress it is not a file-sharing application or a video download service. Like other “on-demand” services, Joost will let viewers watch a show when they like and pause and rewind programmes. According to the founders, the main aim is to improve the quality of video content viewed online on sites such as YouTube. The service will be funded through advertising once subscriber numbers have picked up.

Joost was a “piracy-proof” Internet platform based on the open-source Mozilla web browser and was crafted to guarantee copyright protection for creators and owners of content, according to its founders. “We are not only giving the world a TV, we are giving them a TV they can play around with; you can add things to, you can modify,” said Joost chief technology officer Dirk-Willem van Gulik. Luxembourg-based Joost claimed to be the first global television distribution platform that brought content owners, advertisers, and audiences together in an interactive, community-driven environment. Joost had a team of workers converting television programs to digital format and adding information about actors, action, titles, directors and “all the fun facts so people could search and find them,” Gulik said. The shows will be shared in a peer-to-peer format, with users getting them from each others’ computers, according to Gulik. Seed content will be sent out from a set of Joost computer servers at the firm’s main data center in Luxembourg City and elsewhere.

Thousands of users have downloaded the Joost software despite the company being in trial phase. As with Skype for VoIP, the free software will allow users to browse the Internet for channels and content clips. Others involved in Joost include Henrik Werdelin, a leading light of the Venice Project, who will act as executive VP, creative and product development (who was previously VP product development at MTV Networks) and Fredrik de Wahl, who will be CEO. Dirk-Willem van Gulik has been named Joost’s CTO. Friis and Zennstrom will continue their day jobs at Skype and e-Bay while daily management of Joost is handled by de Wahl. They funded the Venice Project using part of the money from Skype’s sale in late September 2005 to e-bay for $2.5 billion.

Joost will be competing against video-sharing websites such as Google-owned YouTube and a host of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services displayed last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.