Joost - TV on demand

July 5th, 2007 6

I’ve got a cool new icon on my dock, that of Joost - an on demand Web TV service. First impressions are pretty good, for a ‘friends only’ beta it works well and the programs load and buffer pretty well (although that could have something to do with my shiny new ADSL connection).

Joost is a stand alone application that links to their service. It starts up in full screen mode, and works pretty much like any other digital on demand service. You can pick your channel and show from an easy to use menu. There’s also a ‘My Joost’ menu with things like an on screen clock, but I didn’t really see the point in all this.

It’s an ad paid for system, but that’s cool, and you only get one 30 second advert for each 15 min of TV.. Which is a lot better than ITV.

One thing I did miss was an indication of how much of the program was buffered. I really missed the ability to pause and let the stream catch up with itself, this would have saved a little jerkiness I noticed later on. Maybe when some of the US users were logging on and slowing the servers?

It performed pretty well in window and full screen modes, although don’t expect HD quality. The compression is pretty obvious on a 15″ screen, although it looks mint in window mode.

I’ll be looking forward to this system getting noticed and attracting some (much) better programing, as to be honest the shows they have at the moment are a little pants. Anyway, if you want to check it out, drop me a line and I’ll invite you..

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