Azureus announced today that it has opened up its online video distribution platform, Vuze (see our earlier review), offering content producers, big and small, the chance to distribute and monetize their content in a variety of ways including ad-supported streaming and download-to-own. The company also revealed that it has reached the milestone of 10 million unique downloads for its Mac and Windows-based client, with the company adding 2 million new “viewers” in September alone.

Dubbed the Vuze Open Entertainment Platform, content creators can mix and match from a variety of business models: free or ad-supported streaming and downloads, as well as paid-for rental and download-to-own. Additionally, producers can decide whether or not to employ Windows Media DRM, and Vuze soon hopes to be able to offer watermarking as an alternative.

In a phone briefing, Azureus CEO Gilles BianRosa told me that since we’re in the very early days of online video, the Vuze platform is designed to help content creators experiment with digital distribution and the various associated business models. For example, a producer might choose to offer a lower quality version of their program as a free download and charge for the HD-version.

Vuze’s PC-to-TV strategy

I asked BianRosa if, like a number of its competitors, the company had any plans to offer its service via a set-top-box, in order to make it easier to get Vuze content onto a television. BianRosa explained that there a number of reasons why doing so was not currently a priority.

“PC-to-TV”-type devices, often referred to as media extenders, have been around for a number of years, and yet have failed to reach anything like mass adoption. The reason, argues Tim Lee over at TechDirt, is that unlike the “open” MP3 format, which in the early 90s acted as the catylst for a burgeoning digital audio player market, there hasn’t been an equivalent standard for streaming content from a PC to the television.

I think the big difference is that the lack of DRM on CDs allowed the industry to standardize on the open MP3 format, despite the music industry’s best efforts to shut down the makers of the first MP3 players. Once the courts confirmed that CD ripping was legal, it created a thriving ecosystem of software and hardware around the MP3 format, and it made it easier for startup firms like iRiver to jump into the market quickly and produce innovative new products. On the other hand, because DVDs are encumbered with DRM, firms wanting to make digital video devices have to kowtow to Hollywood to get permission to make devices that can play their content—even if the user has already paid for it. Getting Hollywood’s permission requires the sort of endless negotiation and bureaucracy that is fatal to a high-tech startup.

Lee then gives the example of the original XBox “games console”, which has been hacked beyond all recognition to bypass the limits Microsoft placed on the device’s original media extender capabilities, so that it supports almost any video and audio format.

While I don’t quite follow Lee’s first example, since lots of software exists for ripping a DVD to a user’s computer (although such functionality is notably missing from iTunes), it’s certainly true that DRM and the need to pander to Hollywood has held back the adoption of video downloads, and therefore media extenders. And, perhaps as a result, too many hardware offerings are “closed” in the sense that users are stuck with the audio and video formats, and Internet services, which are supported “right out of the box”.

Earlier this week Adobe made available for download a Beta version of its new desktop video player based on the company’s Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a cross-platform technology designed to bring web-based applications to the desktop.

The Adobe Media Player combines a channel guide, streaming video player and video podcast client into a single desktop application, which, since it’s built on top of the AIR platform, runs on both a Mac or PC.

For publishers, of which CBS, PBS, Yahoo! Video, Blip.tv and others have already signed on, Adobe is offering “sophisticated” measurement tools, monetization through targeted advertising, as well as customized branding and copy protection.

After taking the application for a spin, here are my initial thoughts…

Earlier today I asked the question: how long before we see Internet TV service, Joost, running on some kind of a set-top-box? Within “the next 18 months”, answers CEO Mike Volpi, during a video interview conducted by Liz Gannes over at NewTeeVee*, to coincide with Joost’s full public launch.

Volpi explains that Joost’s current user base is made up of a younger “early adopter” demographic who are comfortable with viewing content from the Internet TV service on a PC or Mac, as they already do when “popping in a DVD” or browsing sites like YouTube. However, for Joost to go mainstream, the service will need to run on other platforms.

Two seemingly unrelated announcements last week have got me thinking about whether the future of “full screen” Internet TV applications, such as Joost or Babelgum, reside on a PC or, instead, some sort of set-top-box which connects to a TV.

Microsoft launched a Beta version of its new MSN Video-based “Internet TV” service, compatible with “Extenders for Media Center” devices from Cisco, D-Link, and HP; and Jaman published a software hack — albeit, unsupported — to enable content from its movie download store to work with the AppleTV.

Other online video services to have already aligned with hardware manufacturers include BitTorrent, which released an SDK for set-top boxes, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices, and media extenders; Google-owned YouTube with their strong partnership with Apple; and DivX who are busy shopping around their “Connected” media extender hardware reference design to Asian consumer electronics companies.

What all of the above companies are betting, to varying degrees, is that for all the social and interactive advantages of online video, certain kinds of content, particularly long form programing, still wants to be viewed from the couch on a large widescreen TV.