Joost a Little More Content

I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Joost Beta. For those of you not 100% connected with the web world, Joost bills itself as the “next generation” of video on the web.

Since I had seen a ton of reviews already, I was not really expecting to like Joost much. I think response has been more “good not great”.

Setup
I was not very happy to see that there wasn’t a Joost client availible for Power PC Macs. Since I have both a PPC and an Intel Mac it wasn’t a big deal, just very annoying. Otherwise the setup was clean and very easy (what setup isn’t on a mac?).

Initial Impression
After I launched the Joost application, my computer was suddenly turned into an immersive theater experience. The opening animation was very good and gave a pretty good overview to the Joost experience. The controls felt a lot like watching a movie full screen on a mac, except the menu option did not take you back to another screen or iTunes. The content menu is superimposed over the video you are watching which makes it very convenient.

Quality
The video quality was first rate, comparable to watching a DVD on my Mac screen. The video did pause and seem to rebuffer at points, but I think this was probably due to my aging Wifi setup than anything on the Joost servers. I thought the audio was the best part of the experience. It sounded really good on my Mac speakers.

Content
Content for right now sucks. There is a lot of stuff on Joost, but none of it really appeals to me. I really don’t think that the Joost people thought a lot about the type of content they should have for early adopters. I entered a chat with a few people during a P.Diddy video and found that they were all talking about Joost going live an not the actual video. For now, content seems to be Joost’s biggest problem. I’m sure that when content provoiders see the quality, they will sign up.

I don’t really know what the future holds for Joost. I could actually see them doing something a little bit different and offering their player as a distribution platform. I think bigger players like the major networks and cable companies could easily adapt this technology to a sort of “on demand” service online. This would offer one unifying technology instead of the myriad technologies that are being used right now.

Hey, it’s a thought.

Anyway, Joost is off to a very good start. I’m going to turn on “Chains of Love” now and let my brian rot.