Juicy Joost
On Friday I recieved an email that I have been eagerly awaiting for over a month, my Joost Beta Test invitation email. I’ve been playing around with Joost for 2 Days and I have to say, it’s really cool. Before I say anything more I need to mention that, no, I do not have any invites. Here is my review:
Joost is a very good idea, and it’s very well Implemented. At this point there are only about 50 channels with an average of about 8 shows each. That sounds like a lot, but then you have to consider that 90% of the shows are complete crap. The only major network that is currently on Joost is the National Geographic Channel, there are about 10 shows on that network, most of them pretty old. There are a few other shows that are/were on real TV (Rocky and Bullwinkle for example). There are also quite a few music videos from major bands like Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Many of the channels are internet TV networks that are not all that good in content or production values. Currently there really isn’t much on, however Viacom has signed a deal with Joost, presumably that would bring channels like Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodean, Spike, TV LAND, and VHR. It could also bring movies from Paramount and Dreamworks. Wouldn’t that just be awesome?
Streaming video on most services can sometimes be slow and low quality. Joost uses P2P to stream the video, so for most channels the streaming is seamless, however for less popular channels it can be a bit slow. The disadvantage of Joost’s P2P nature is that it not only downloads video, it uploads video, so if you have a cap on your bandwidth it will use it up very quickly. The video quality is a lot better than YouTube, still not quite TV quality though. When watching it on a 17in. screen like mine it looks just fine, Leo Laporte claims that on a 30in screen it looks like crap, I really wouldn’t know.
The Joost for mac client definetly isn’t the snappiest or most stable program i’ve used. It has a lot of Mac OS X-ish fades and wipes, but at least on my Core Duo iMac the effects don’t run real time. Sometimes scrolling through the channel list can be painful, and channel information can take up to a minute to load. When watching videos the client normally works nicely, sometimes it is slow and has trouble playing back the video, it has even crashed on me a couple times. For the most part the client is usable, but it is still buggy and needs optimization for Macs. I should mention that it is for intel macs only, i’m not sure if they ever plan to support PPC macs.
Of course, Joost is free money wise, but it does have ads. There are much fewer ads on Joost than on regular TV. You cannot fast-forward through ads, but there is only 1 ad at a time, at an interval of 10 – 30 minutes depending on the channel. The ads are no more than 30 seconds a piece. The only problem is sometimes the ads take a long time to buffer. You might end up waiting as long as a minute to get a 30 second ad. Usually it’s not a problem. Joost ads are very well implemented.
So, Joost is a really cool concept, and they did a good job of making it usable and consumer freindly. The only question is whether or not other TV networks will follow Viacoms lead and join Joost. If all of the major networks join, Joost could hurt/kill regular TV. We just have to wait and see.
i need a invitation please
codreaovasile@gmail.com
Sorry, I didn’t get any. If I get one soon i’ll send it to you.
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