Joost Review

Thanks to an invite from Rommel, I was able to play with Joost a few weeks ago. For his kindness he asked simply for a review and after some delay I shall post it now. Thanks again Rommel!

BG: 17in Pavilion zd8000, 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM connected via T1
The media interface feels lighter than MS Media Center (which I have merely played with), in terms of alt-tabbing/minimizing etc — the interface is pretty slick, minimal but clean — the little ‘bug’ or animated graphic @ bottom left appears to be buggy in that the looping animation doesnt seem to ever quite loop properly.

I do not like how restricted the content is…I think that will be a major downfall. I understand a bridge is trying to be made between the old broadcast land and youtubia however I think openess is key.

I attempted to play 20 videos (btw, the classical recordings are great) and the following occured:

10 - played all the way through without a hitch
5 - played through a portion and then just stopped with the message that the content was restricted and couldnt be played now
3 - were restricted for unknown reasons
2 - started playing and then just skipped to the next video without any indication

From the above you can tell my experience was mixed. Again I do not think the openess of web video is fully appreciated in Joost…indeed I would rather surf StumbleUpon video and miss out on the fullscreen (sometimes) because the content is vast and a lot of it is sorted well — joost needs to take stumbleupon to the next level with their native machine code interfaces….which should be written at most in XUL or something if they already are not — I guess the native client is for [eventual] greater DRM control? DRM has never set well with me.

It was quite annoying when I was in the middle of a vid and it stopped and told me it couldnt play the content any longer even if I tried to replay it….and this content did not appear to be promotional (ie: only play x mins of it) because as I said, I was fancying the classical recordings and even some of those stopped in the middle supposedly because of “restrictions” — further i think the reasons for the restrictions should be made clear (ie: regional, temporal etc)

Anyway, there is content that I do not normally find at large which is cool and I think they have some solid backend deals in place which could really enable Joost to become the bridge they are aiming for…

Joost is definetely something to watch….because the iTV space is huge and is only begining to begin.