I re-installed Joost today again - a colleague had mentioned that the performance is now much better so I wanted to check it out as well. And indeed it looks more stable. User interface is only slightly changed but cannot see much if any web 2.0 (IM, chat, wiki, blog etc.) features yet. I guess they will come up with that when the time is right.

Not much news on the content that they offer, though. Still mostly junk IMHO. For example, even if you look at Reuters Business News you can see stuff like Paris Hilton and Spice Girls popping up first which really turned me off. The resolution is pretty bad when you start watching on full screen but it appears to get better over time. Not sure if my brain is fooling me here or if they indeed dynamically increase it over time once they have more used up your PC and others' resources across the P2P network.

"Content is king" is what Swisscom announced in a press release yesterday, saying that from today on (November 1, 2006) 75% of all Swiss households will have access to Bluewin TV for about 30 CHF (18 USD) per month. This will include some 100 regional, national and international TV channels and 70 radio stations. Live sport events will have to be paid extra. E.g. UEFA Champions League soccer matches or the German Bundesliga would cost an additional 1 CHF per match. Also access to a video on demand store is possible (500 movies cost is CHF 3.50 for 24 hours per download).

An additional one-time 80 CHF has to be paid for the installation of a video storage box (up to 100 hours) between the TV and the ADSL or VDSL modem.

This all sounds pretty interesting to me and means competition for Cablecom the Swiss cable provider who is aggressively investing as well into voice (fixed and mobile) and Internet access services. The end result should be fast Internet, IPTV, and VoD services for a pretty good price for the end users, making Switzerland overall a good place for data and telecom services.

Microsoft is rolling up the European markets for IPTV. After winning the Deutsche Telekom account they have France's Club Internet, which belongs to DT, on board as the first IPTV service provider in Europe to launch video on demand using the Microsoft platform. According to Heise Online the service will allow users to see two HDTV programs simultaneously and record up to 50hours. To make things - nearly - complete for Microsoft, they also announced that BT will be using their software later this year.

This round the clock IPTV channel based on Macromedia Flash technology, the first of its kind in Europe, has been set up by the German multimedia agency Exozet. Exozet has offices in Berlin, Potsdam, Vienna and Zagreb.

The company also offers a software for video streaming content management called exozet.cms. In the free Bunch.TV video clips can be voted on and people can chat about it. Also an electronic programming guide (EPG) can be accessed. Some videos are available on demand so people can setup their own TV show. Here Bunch.TV works with the partner/customer Desperados who puts codes for video clips onto bottle labels. Those can then also be activated via premium SMS. Each show -series of video clips- comes with its own look and feel (skins) which gives a creative viewing experience.

Next step on their roadmap is to offer mobile TV content as well as content for the iPod community. Interfaces to digital signage systems are already realized. We think this is a great idea and great achievement. The company seems ready to export this technology to the English-speaking world as well. They are already registered in the UK, probably because of tax reasons.