Awesome

Joost: First Step to the Death of Television

By EAN ⋅ October 4, 2007 ⋅  Email this Post ⋅  Print this Post ⋅ Post a Comment

Developers: Joost N.V.
Version: 1.0 Beta
Price: Free
Operating Systems: Mac OS X, Windows
Click here to try Joost for yourself.

All We Need is Faster Internet in America…

Joost has been one of my favorite programs to play around with since I first got my hands on an early beta copy. A lot has changed since then. Modified user interface, advertisements, new logo, and a hell of a lot of new channels, but the core of the program remains the same. The program instantly sucks you in. From the instant full screen mode to the fancy moving “loading” light swirls to a GUI that reminds me of several Mac programs, the 1.0 Beta version of Joost hooks you from the minute you fire it up.

One of the things that I’m happy to report on with the new version is that the channel selection seems to have grown by a large margin. It is still missing my favorite show, Top Gear, but I suppose I can settle with Fifth Gear, Audi TV, and the various other car shows and music video stations that Joost currently offers. As more networks start to get involved, hopefully Joost will continue to grow, but there’s a little something for everyone even now.

Although each one of you is likely to find at least one program to watch on Joost, the question is will you actually be able to run the program. Joost is not exactly a small order, streaming and rendering full screen video, after all. It works pretty well, and I was able to install it on a variety of computers including a dinosaur of a Gateway with 512 MB RAM and an early model Pentium 4. It’s mighty slow on that one, but it still manages to work somehow. On faster computers like my desktop and MacBook, Joost runs smoothly with the occasional hiccup when I’m running too many programs at once on my Apple laptop.

I’m continually impressed with the Joost’s responsiveness. Menus open and channels change with very little lag time. Joost is actually faster at changing channels than my current DirecTV HD receiver. And, much like my DirecTV HD receiver tends to do, Joost crashes every now and then. Also, when closing the program, I’m never surprised to find that Joost’s process has failed to respond according to my Mac’s activity monitor.

So Joost looks good, it responds pretty well with a few kinks - but what about the advertising? How intrusive is it? It’s certainly less annoying than traditional commercial breaks that can last three to five minutes. I’d love to see regular television adopt some kind of bottom of the screen advertising and skip out on the majority of the commercial breaks they use now. On the flip side, commercials do give us an opportunity to stretch our legs or grab some grub. And with Tivo, I’ve not watched a commercial in months.

I see Joost as the first step in the eventual demise of television. I’m not saying that TV is going to be gone in a year. Not even five years. But now that we see Joost hitting full stride and Adobe’s new media player entering the market, we have two very significant players in the whole internet TV movement. With faster connection speeds, better processors, and cheaper LCD monitors becoming more and more popular, traditional TV may be on the way out sooner than we think. Hopefully the guys behind Joost will develop a Linux version before that day comes.

Click here to try out Joost for yourself.

- Eric Norton