When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, my guess would be they planned to make some money out of it. So far though, that hasn’t happened.

YouTube has experimented with video advert formats, but overall, the site remains an ad-free, and hence profit-free Web destination.

Eric Schmidt Speaks

It seems that may all be about to change however, after Google CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo in an interview to be screened later today.

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The BBC iPlayer has surprised everyone, even the BBC itself, with the amount of viewers it has picked up since it’s relaunch over Christmas. But not everyone is happy with that success.

James Murdoch (yes, media chief Rupert’s son) is the Chairman of BSkyB, a pay television service in the UK, has criticised the service, and almost accused it of monopolizing the business of on-demand - surprise surprise.

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The last time we spoke about Joost here on Web TV Wire, it was to talk about its possible demise.

Many bloggers and industry analysts claimed at the time that it would be dead within a year.

I ended that article by concluding that Joost would probably be around beyond 2008, but for it to happen, some major changes would have to take place to the service.

And we could be in luck…

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Since co-founding YouTube in 2005 along with Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, Steve Chen has seen his site go from a small avenue of the World World Web to a Google owned subsidiary which accounts for a third of all video viewed on the Internet.

So naturally, he’s a positive kind of guy, even when it comes to some of the problems associated with having over 10 hours of footage uploaded to the site every minute.

Unsavoury Clips

In recent months, YouTube has been accused of being responsible for a number of undesirable clips making their way on the Internet for all and sundry to view.

These include videos of people being bullied, and happy slapped, rape, and gratuitous violence. There is also the ongoing threat of porn finding its way through the filters.

So the question is: Should YouTube start vetting videos before they get uploaded to the site? The Sydney Morning Herald put this question to Steve Chen, and his response may surprise some.

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NRK recently took part in a very successful experiment with distributing the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation programme, Nordkalotten 365, via BitTorrent.

A little while afterwards, I was interviewed by the German news web site www.tagesschau.de about the process, and how this could affect distribution of similar programmes in the future.

Although the article is in German, my original conversation with Mr. Wulf Rohwedder is in English. It reveals some of my thoughts about this project so I decided to share it:

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Transcoding on demand, especially when it comes to mobile video, is going to play an important part in the growth of online video as the medium of choice.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Gerry Purdy, Vice President and Chief Analyst for Frost & Sullivan to discuss their analysis of the current and future transcoding market. 

Mobile Video

Having both just come back from the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, we had quite a bit to talk about, especially around mobile video. 

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CrossCast is an Online UI and tools platform for production professionals. 

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spoken with Mirco Pasqualini, lead designer for the system, and here he gives his insights on version 2.0.

Version 2.0 is slated for release sometime during the summer of ‘08,  and Mirco sent over some new screenshots and content about the platform, as featured below.

Two screens from CrossCast look very Joost like which Mirco concedes is the look in the current beta version but will change significantly over 2008.

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