I was recently given an invite to try out joost - an internet streamed TV service that actually manages to get real TV content on there. Personally as soon as I heard they had episodes of I Hate My 30’s from VH1 I knew I had to try it out. Watch the show - it’s fantastic (any TV show that name-drops Mr. Belvedere is alright with me).
| So, I grabbed the client, logged in, and fired it up. At any point clicking on the screen will bring up the overhead menu, from which you can pick the Channel Catalog to pick what you want to watch. The channels are a combination of old TV shows, made-for-joost content, and TV shows offered up from current TV networks. |  |
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On top of the TV at any point you can turn on a number of Widgets (solely for the sake of being buzzword compliant I’m sure) that basically just block portions of the video you’re supposedly trying to watch - I don’t see the point and turned all of them off pretty much immediately. |
All of this isn’t bad, and the interface is something anyone with about 10 minutes of playing with could get to the point where they can pick what they want to watch and watch it. This is good. What’s bad is the streaming. I’m on a 3 mbit DSL line at home, and wasn’t able to make it through a single episode of I Hate My 30’s without a number of pauses and delays for buffering. And there’s the killer. That right there keeps it from being usable as a main entertainment source. Buffering before a show starts is acceptible - buffering while the ads play (hint for joost, if you pre-download the ads the client, you can then use commercial breaks to get a jump-start on buffering the remaining portion of a show) is even better, but having my watching experience constantly pausing for buffering made for a frustration time. I couldn’t sit down on the couch with the wife and watch a show on joost because of this. I tried at three different times of day - early morning (7am), midday (1pm), and later in the night (11pm) and all three times had the same problems with pauses.
I like the idea, I like some of the content, I just wish I could sit down and watch a show and forget that I’m using a computer program (this will be KEY in the future of moving video through a computer to the TV).
VinnieG | 06-Aug-07 at 8:06 pm | Permalink
Wow, despite the problems it does seem like a great idea. Sort of like all those sci-fi shows come to life. . .just slower.
bizzyb0t | 10-Aug-07 at 9:44 pm | Permalink
Meh, my POV was a lot like yours. I was given an invite and thought it was an excellent idea. However, their home servers are too slow and there’s major packet loss. It’s like a giant streaming bit torrent feed. Impressive but not quite there.