Veoh TV: Turning the Web Into TV
Dmitry Shapiro is tired of hearing about Joost, the peer-to-peer Internet TV service launched by the founders of Skype. "Joost is your old man's TV," sneers Shapiro, the CEO of competing Web video service Veoh. By that, he means that Joost is merely replicating …
Context & Ripple Effects
Veoh's announcement lands four days after the company closed a confirmed ~$26 million Series C-backed push into a field where Joost — built by Skype's founders — is regarded as the leader in internet television, and eleven days after TechCrunch framed the space as a two-horse race between Joost and Babelgum. Shapiro's counter-positioning is deliberate: where he says Joost 'merely replicates' traditional television ('your old man's TV'), Veoh TV aims to wrap the entire open Web into a TV-style interface.
The rivalry has a second front: Joost is rumored to be in talks with hardware vendors to embed its service into set-top boxes and televisions, while Veoh itself faces an unconfirmed question about whether it will keep hosting popular adult videos — both companies fighting over what their services are allowed to be.
First-order effects
- Joost's leadership position in internet TV gets its first serious challenge from a differently-built product: instead of a closed channel lineup, Veoh TV indexes content already living on the open Web, forcing a direct comparison of distribution philosophies.
- Shapiro's fresh venture backing gives Veoh the runway to market Veoh TV aggressively against Joost at launch rather than ceding the category's mindshare.
Second-order effects
- If Veoh TV's browse-the-whole-Web model gains traction, Joost's rumored set-top and embedded-hardware talks become more urgent — distribution deals turn from nice-to-have into the defense for a walled-channel approach.
- Content owners and advertisers now have two competing gateways bidding for placement, shifting early leverage in internet TV licensing toward whoever aggregates the larger audience.
Third-order effects
- The contest previews the structural question that will decide internet TV: whether viewers settle into replicated broadcast-style channels or a software layer that organizes everything already published on the Web — with interface control, not content ownership, emerging as the contested asset.
- A win for the aggregation model would pressure every player replicating linear TV online to open up, reshaping how rights holders license catalog content to intermediaries.
The trend: Internet television is splitting between closed P2P channel replicas like Joost and open-Web aggregation layers like Veoh TV, with the winner determining who controls the living-room interface.