Joost: Hands On
April 13, 2007
If you still don’t know what Joost is, where have you been over the past few months? You might know it as The Venice Project but if you’re unfamiliar with both of these terms, it’s the beginning of a television revolution that I’ve been waiting for. It’s based on P2P technology and is from Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who started two little things called Skype and Kazaa. It’s the VoD experience that I want to take over the world and it’s only been in beta since December (Feb for Mac users). It’s invite only to become part of the revolution before it will eventually role out to the masses. It’s all FREE too, so there’s no reason not to sign up for the beta testing, but be patient, it can take a while for them to let you in. It’s definitely worth it though.
The invitation landed in my inbox on Thursday evening and I don’t think I could have been anymore excited. I’d been waiting for this since January when I applied to be part of the beta testing. I rushed to the download link and before long it had evaluated my system and was installing. Despite it thinking – for some bizarre reason – that my machine might not be specced highly enough to run even though I’d either met or exceeded the minimum requirements. Hopefully, at this stage you’ll have some idea on whether or not you’ll be able to install it for yourself. I’m using a 2mbps connection, this works fine but sometimes the program began to stutter or even stop playing altogether. A slight problem for an enjoyable viewing experience, after closing messenger it seemed to help and episodes ran almost superbly. Whilst the quality isn’t brilliant (above YouTube – below standard definition), it will supposedly be capable of better resolutions. The content is pretty limited but already some big names are getting in on it. Viacom for example have brought a few treats like clips from MTV; this probably being the reason why they recently objected to their products being freely distributed around YouTube. Some things are ful length programmes but others like Fifth Gear are short clips. It’s OK, but it’s still in beta, more content will come and it will take over the world – probably. Channels are limited to different regions of the world. Obviously the US get better content from the likes of National Geographic and Warner.
The menus make it easy to use and navigate around the application with a translucent appearance that wouldn’t look out of place on a Mac. Simply select a “channel”, then an episode to watch and it’ll play. Simple enough really. In fact the whole experience would be familiar to anyone who has used a set top box on screen interface like Sky or Virgin. It is video on demand though, so no live stuff – yet – but who knows what will be offered via Joost. Being on demand though, there aren’t any schedules, so you watch what you want, exactly when you want to.
I’m not saying it doesn’t have flaws, the lack of any ability to stream content from PC to TV might leave some feeling the prospect of watching TV on their PC screen a little offputting. There isn’t any reason why they couldn’t connect their PC to their big screen, but that isn’t really an option when the computer’s in the study and the big screen is in the living room. Recording content isn’t a possibilty either, but then why would you want to when you can watch the programmes on demand? Obviously, content is limited at the moment but this can only grow. It’s not really meant to replace your TV just yet but it is an indication of what’s to come. The service is supported by ads, but this really isn’t irritating, we’re all used to ad supported television and if anything the short ad bursts before a programme starts didn’t bother me at all. Besides, the ads make a good service free for the audience.
Back to the cool features, and this one (shown above) is like the features available on DVDs. This probably isn’t the best use of the potential, simply linking to other programmes) but surely content providers will incorporate special Joost features. There are also a few widgets that can be laid on top of the screen, the ones currently available are made by Joost and are limited to a clock and news aggregators from the Joost blog but word is that users will be able to create and submit their own. Users can also talk – chat room style – with others watching the same shows as they are. A feature that I’ve not yet tried for myself. This is the beginning of a revolution, it’s going to change the way that we all watch TV. Will we ever see an end to conventional TV scheduling? I certainly hope so.
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- About Joost
- Joost
- This entry is referred to at Tech Paparazzi: Joost Disappointing
