Joost
Wow, Joost finally sent out some more invitations to the beta, and I was one of the lucky ones! Started the download immediately and very soon I was greeted with a black screen running a full screen demonstration of what Joost was all about.
Quite slick in fact, straight from running the program you are pushed right into the experience. Although I can understand some people not liking it, I was actually listening to iTunes at the time and got a nice mangled noise of two different music tracks playing at once. Fortunately Exposé still works so I could hop out and back in again without disturbing it too much. Once the introduction video was over I immediately started to see live videos, live music videos in fact, and quickly learned where the menu was located to shut it off. Never seen the point in music videos personally.
So what else was on? Lots, actually! First I checked out the Fifth Gear link, and found an impressive range of clips to start watching. So far I’m impressed, although the speed does leave a little to be desired. I’m running this on a 2Mb Broadband line and, even with nothing else sharing the bandwidth, there was still some stuttering as the video buffered.
Now I come to my last point. And it’s a strange one. From my quick trial I couldn’t help but notice that this basically seemed to be a full screen YouTube client. From the list of music videos to the list of Fifth Gear clips there was really nothing available I couldn’t already experience on YouTube, and that was kind of worrying. This platform seems ideal for new content, as it’s pretty much a straight mash-up of the standard TV and Internet delivery methods. But all I’m seeing is Internet content being delivered as though it was on TV (save of course for the really rather poor quality, but I can live with that). If I wanted that I would get a DVD out and put it into my laptop. At least then there would be annoying adverts between every clip. And don’t forget, they really are clips. Well, I’ll hold judgement until part two, but lets just say, it’s not looking great.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment