Zattoo (see our review) is one of only a few Internet TV applications that I use on an almost daily basis. It enables me to watch live television — which includes all of the BBC’s offerings along with a few other European channels — in a window in the corner of my laptop, while I remain productive: blogging, replying to or writing email and chatting over IM. In this way, Zattoo is pitched very differently to competitors such as Joost or Babelgum, both of which attempt to re-create part of the “lean-back” experience of traditional TV.

I caught up with two of Zattoo’s co-founders (via email), Sugih Jamin and Beat Knecht, to find out more about the company’s mission and its Silicon Valley-esque roots in academia.

Digital Spy are reporting that Watch India, a subscription-based Internet TV channel with a focus on Indian programing, has been a great success: “In its first month, it managed 100,000 unique viewers, with over 33,000 coming from the UK alone.”

Watch India has a particularly strong position regarding its appeal to ex-pat Indians. While I have no knowledge of the availability of good Indian television content outside of India, it’s likely that by offering programs direct, Watch India can provide a wider range of content — including more recent productions — than that the limited offerings of cable or satellite television. If the programming on Watch India can mirror content “back home”, and offer it worldwide, then I can only see its popularity growing, and also the possibility of other foreign language TV portals being developed.

It’s no secret that I’m critical of the BBC’s decision to buy into Microsoft’s DRM solution for its recently launched Internet TV catch-up service, iPlayer. In a post titled ‘BBC’s iPlayer and the Windows DRM monopoly‘, I expressed my bemusement that, after four years of R&D and three million pounds of funding, the corporation needed to outsource its DRM solution in the first place. However, I never went as far as to accuse the BBC of being corrupt, which is precisely what The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has done, alleging that the public service broadcaster’s management is too close to Microsoft.