You knew where you were with dotcom executives when they were mostly untested techies and bluffers, swimming in ill-gotten venture capital and foghorning about the death of all other media revenues.
Chris Deering, non-executive chairman of Jalipo, an online TV and video marketplace that launches next week at the MIPTV trade show in Cannes, represents a different breed in every sense.
Here is the man who sold Europe its PlayStations and then its PS2s, raking in revenues estimated at EUR30bn (£20.3bn) in a decade.
Now retired from Sony, where he was president of Europe, he believes that in Jalipo he has found a platform elegant enough to turn web TV into a pay-per-view commodity, while also delivering important new advertising channels.
Unlike the typical dotcom executive of popular renown, Deering claims all this can be achieved without damage to TV or broadcast revenues. He is the kind of person beleaguered media executives will enjoy listening to.
He believes web TV, properly monetised and rights-protected, has the potential to be "like radio, before there were tape recorders", and that Jalipo - which, in the YouTube style, is both a site and an embeddable player - offers the platform to return us to that golden age when copyright meant something, advertising worked and everything was still fun.
Reassuring worldview
"TV didn't kill cinema, radio didn't kill pre-recorded music and the internet is not going to kill traditional media," he says, drawing on a 35-year career spent at the point where content meets technology.
Deering and his reassuring world-view came to Jalipo at the end of 2005, while he was hunting, on Sony's behalf, for a system to monetise flexible streaming services.
Jalipo founder Alex Taylor had created just such a thing, bundling micropayment and rights management software behind a Flash player capable of streaming video at any number of different speeds.
The company launches officially in Cannes next week with a collection of content partners as yet unannounced. They are likely to include TV companies, live event producers and film distributors, all seeking to make use of the internet as a vehicle to distribute niche content to scattered markets currently unserved by traditional channels.
"Jalipo's mentality is that there is a large mass of high-quality content that people aren't able to see on TV, as well as things on TV that you can't watch online," says Deering.
He cites art-house films, live volleyball and - his own passion - programmes about boats. All content deals are non-exclusive and copyright owners can choose to stream in selected territories if they have existing distribution deals to protect.
It is perhaps significant that Deering's favourite comparison for the new company is eBay, on account of the infinite flexibility Jalipo gives to those selling their products - copyright owners can set the price of their content, which consumers will typically pay for on a per-minute basis using pre-paid "J-credits".
"This is not a hard-wired cable system for a giant television in the living room watched by the entire family," he says. "This is for personal viewing - possibly jumped to the big screen but more often than not on a laptop, in bed, in a hotel room or in the kitchen."
Major asset
Jalipo's likely popularity with content owners is a major asset in an area where the legalities of most usage are still somewhat grey.
Deering believes there is a gaping hole in the popular web TV advertising models offered by players such as YouTube, Joost and Babelgum, which are all free to view.
"The difference between Jalipo and the new-style advertising-based web TV sites is that they generally say, 'well, we will give you exposure from our website, and if and when we can sell some ads, we will give you some of it'," he says. "Historically, that story hasn't cut much ice with content owners."
That doesn't mean Jalipo plans to swerve advertising altogether. It has a wide range of models in mind, from wholly or partly sponsored content, to TV-style embedded ads, all at content owners' discretion.
Deering reveals that Jalipo is working with IGA Worldwide, the in-game advertising specialist. "We know our technology is compatible with theirs and they have a big advertising sales force," he says. "We may develop our own advertising sales force to accompany that."
Deering divides his so-called retirement between a clutch of technology and arts-related roles. While he no longer presides over a vast brand as he did at Sony and, before that, in senior positions at Gillette, Atari and Columbia Pictures, he detects a clear thread running from that time to this.
"The fun of high-tech and entertainment is that it never, ever stops," he says. "Anybody who thinks they have figured it out is naive. It always gets better."
CV
2006: Non-executive chairman, Jalipo; also chairman of Codemasters Group and the Edinburgh Interactive Festival and non-executive board director of HandheldLearning.co.uk and IGA Worldwide
2004: President, Sony Europe and chairman and chief executive, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
1995: President, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
1990: European vice-president and chief operating officer, Columbia Tristar International
1985: Senior vice-president, Columbia Pictures
1982: Vice-president of international marketing, Atari
1979: Head of European marketing group, Gillette.