I came across another internet TV start-up Veoh. Think of it as a mix between YouTube and Joost. Now you might think it’s a ridiculous mix because YouTube and Joost are the exact opposite of each other in so many different ways! YouTube carries the most common foundations of Web 2.0 – user generated contents, folksonomy, a bottom up approach. While Joost licensed their content from the content providers, contents are grouped by Joost and it’s pretty much a top down approach despite a few social features like chat and send email and tag favorites. Another difference between them is YouTube usually carries short clips while Joost tried to serve up more lengthy videos and better in qualities. Yet another difference is that YouTube is mainly website based living in a browser kind of deal. (the just announce integration to AppleTV and iPhone is the exception) Joost need to be access through the Joost software client. You won’t find the videos on Joost website. So how is Veoh a mix between YouTube and Joost?

Veoh has a website interface very similar to YouTube, you can view the videos right there on the site, you can embed the videos on your own blog or MySpace, add to channel, save to favorite, email the link, comment on it, tag it, etc etc. But it also has a software client similar to Joost that you can download and install on your computer. Once it’s installed. You can download the videos on to your computer. Now how is that better than the streaming one on the website? because you can download the video in the highest quality instead of just the Flash streaming video on YouTube and on the website of Veoh. Downloading is using the Peer-to-Peer approach, so it’s fast when a lot of people download the same video. (not so fast on some obscure ones though)

Another thing for Veoh is that it serves lengthy video like an entire episode 40+ mins shows instead of a funny clip for 5 mins. While there are still many videos are uploaded by fans, there are contents up there that is from the content providers. Depends on what you are looking for, so far I found entire episodes or seasons of Futurama, Doctor Who, Scrubs, Jericho, etc. as well as tons of animes, K-dramas, J-drama, HK-dramas (even Heart of Greed (溏心風暴), Family Link (師奶兵團), On the First Beat (學警出更)!) Of course not everything is in complete seasons, but a lot of them are. (some are not in their native language soundtracks though, I’ve seen HK-drama in Vietnamese, K-drama in Mandarin, American shows in German, or some even weirder combination) Some of the video quality is quite excellent too – the Doctor Who episode i saw is identical to the high quality one that i usually saw else-where.

In sum Veoh has potentials, not only on the features but because it’s under-the-radar than other well-known names like YouTube. Without threats of lawsuits just yet, you can find quite a lot of things here. Veoh is also expanding with another interesting software (private-beta though) called VeohTV that let you watch and record internet video from many legal sources (network’s own websites) all within one single interface. So you don’t even have to go to ABC site to watch Lost and then go to Comedy Central’s site to watch the Daily Show, etc etc. Just one single place and you can watch it all. It sounds interesting, hopefully I’ll get invite soon to test it out as well.

Related posts:

1. Audio-visual in the Web 2.0 era Part II
2. Video encoder program
3. Robin Sparkles sing again!
4. Boxee vs Plex
5. Buffy vs Edward Remix

Tagged: softwares · Television · Web 2.0