Joost - because computers were meant to be televisions
I finally decided to give Joost another go after the buggy experience of the early beta. Nothing wrong with beta software being buggy, that's why it's pre-release - I just couldn't be bothered with it before. After all, there are plenty of ways to watch television already.
Now it's out of beta, so I installed it on my Mac Pro. Smooth installation, very flashy and slick, nice fullscreen implementation. Once I actually watched it, though, I didn't see what the fuss was about. Joost lets you see full-screen television programming at marginally better than YouTube quality. The shows are all preceded and followed by bumper ads, only a couple of seconds, but completely untargeted and interruptive.
The interface itself requires the user to experiment a bit, jiggling the mouse to get controls onscreen, leaving icons unlabeled, and there's no obvious way to make the controls go away - apparently you just have to stop moving the mouse and wait fifteen seconds or so.
Most annoying is the tiny pop-up that reminds you of the bumper ad you'd seen before, presumably in the hopes that you'll click for more annoyance. It has a close button, which I used every time, unsure if the bright green shampoo logo would go away on its own.
There's hardly any content on Joost - just lots of one- to three-minute promos for network programming, and full episodes of shows that presumably are in dire need of an audience, since no one's watching them on their teevees.
No portable content, naturally, and I'm not sure if you can save any of the shows. I'm guesssing not. I didn't really bother finding out. After flipping listlessly through the sad tundra of videos, I finally found the only thing that I could even stand to watch - a top-ten list from David Letterman. One minute long. One list.
I watched it, quit Joost, and uninstalled it.
I can see why Joost got all the funding that it did - it's a TV network's best friend. A place to push only the content they want, with unskippable ads, and locked down tight DRM. Unfortunately, there's nothing about Joost that would make a consumer use it.
Mainstream users are still figuring out their DVRs - they're nowhere near ready to install IPTV apps on their computers yet. Tech-savvy users have plenty of other options already - from major sources like YouTube and iTunes, Amazon Unbox and Netflix Watch Now, to indie options like Democracy, Blink.tv and Guba, to the Jolly Roger flying options like BitTorrent and even IRC.
Joost's investors will probably see their money when the technology gets licensed to the right partners, or from a big-name buyout, if they're lucky. For consumers, though, it's useless.
