I was recently invited to join the beta testing program of The Venice Project. The Venice Project is a peer to peer application for internet video from the guys who delivered Kazaa and Sykpe, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.

Each beta users agrees to an non-disclosure agreement that basically says you can’t tell anyone anything or show anyone anything, but their blog seems to give some relieve from the NDA. So I thought I would risk explusion from TVP land to share my experience with Digital Podcast readers.

it’s ok to blog about The Venice Project - the one exception is creating screenshots with TV content behind them - as these images are not owned by us. More detail is in Dirk’s first blog post about this area; cleared screenshots that you can use are here and in general images of our UI without any background (or with crystals background) are ok too.

For those that think YouTube has it nailed, this is much, much more than YouTube on P2P. It seems to be aimed at delivering high quality video at a rate which would compete with TV. If this doesn’t have TV execs quivering in their boots, shoes, or whatever they are wearing now, I don’t know what will. Youtube et al better be figuring out how to get into the P2P game or they risk being left behind.

I am posting the screenshots that have been released for TVP at their blog, although they seem to be somewhat dated from my recent trip to TVP. You can find the screen shots at the bottom of the post.

The current menu includes Paris Hilton, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Warner Bros, Fifth Gear, Lassie, Nettwerk, Hot and Wet, Live @ Much, MusicNation, Atlantic Street, The Diddly Channel, Beyond the Pit, Wildlight, Havoc Action Sports TV, Lazy TV, Off the Fence, Boom Chicago, Critical Shorts, VOY TV and The Rogers Sisters. Certainly a step up from the shows shown in the screen shots, but still a ways to go until all of the most popular content is on line iin TVP. It is almost certainly just a matter of time though, until incredible amounts of great video is available through TVP.

The experience is a full screen with video dominating the whole screen. Hover your mouse down at the bottom center of the screen and the menu stuff starts to appear. It is limited in terms of instructions, but you learn fast what does what. Very intuitive user interfaces seem to run in this P2P family. If you know flash, imagine it working across the whole screen, but without the normal delays you experience with many flash applications.

I was extemely impressed with what they are delivering. I installed the application on my thinkpad, which is about 18 months old and doesn’t have enough video ram installed, but it worked anyway. The video quality at full screen was better than what you can get at YouTube in a small screen or about what Innertube delivers in its small format version. It is substantially better than Innertube’s full screen version though and much more responsive to user interaction for changing screens or videos.

I believe that with the right hardware and bandwidth to the home TVP will deliver high quality, full screen video at high speeds.

And the money to support it all will come from advertisers. TMobile is already a prominent sponser and the player gives TVP the ability to track and monitize the viewership.

The Venice Project is on the way to making internet TV a reality and a high definition verision is only a matter of time. If you are a competitor to TVP pay attention. Skype is a huge threat to telecom and TVP maybe an equal threat to cable TV.

The digital media world just seems to be getting better and better every day.