We haven’t had a look at Joost for a long time, but following an email from them, we thought we’d take a look and give you a quick update.
URL To Programmes
Joost now has its own URL structure so you can blog/point to programmes that are on Joost to others. This works not only for the programme, but to the frame you happen to be watching at the time.
Continue reading Joost Re-reviewed
Joost is continuing to pick up content partners with the most recent being Warner Bros. Television (WBTV). This time Joost is getting the content on an exclusive basis.
One of the common complaints of the TV service, has been that there isn’t anything to watch on it, as was brought up in a recent BBC trial. Having seen what the content of this deal is, we’re not sure that the step towards desirable programming has moved forward.
Continue reading Warner Brothers TV: Joost Gets Exclusive Content
Digital-Lifestyles recently offered me (Reese) an invite to beta-test the new Joost application. As part of the deal, I promised to write this short response about my experience with the application and content.
No Joost on pre-Intel Macs
First off I have to confess that I haven’t been able to access the content offered by Joost because of my aged computer. I, like many others out there, use a pre-intel Mac, and Joost has yet to make their application compatible to our platform. That being the case, I have no response to the usability of their application, simply because I haven’t been able to access it.
Continue reading Joost: Reese’s (non)Review
After the great response to your Joost Invite posting last week, we’re pleased to announce the winners. Sorry we didn’t get around to posting this yesterday, but better late than never, eh?
We’ve noticed that a few people had laid their hands on invites in the intervening period, like Sano.
It was tough to choose between all of the other entries, so we thought it would be best to let geographic distribution be the decider given Joost offers different content in different parts of the world.
Reese in the US is getting because he gave up TV a long time back and it will be interesting to hear his perspective … and he gets bonus points because of the “Ricky Gervais & The Serpent” posting on his blog.
Rogerio in Brazil for his corny joke and gs because it’ll be interesting to have the Taiwanese dimension.
We’re looking forward to their reviews.
Thanks to everyone for the comments and sorry you didn’t get one this time. Stay tuned, and when we get some more, we’ll let you know.
We’re fans of Joost, the full-screen, P2P TV service still in beta.
You’ll know from our Joost coverage that we think it’s definitely one to watch and to that end we want to share the love a little.
We’ve got three invitation available to you, our valued readers and we’re only asking for two things in return.
1 – When you’re posting your interest in the comments below, please complete the following – I’d love the Joost Invite, because …
2 – After you’ve been using Joost for two weeks, write a review for us, giving us your impressions of the service and what you think the impact of it will be.
Simple eh?
Guinness World Records TV have been in touch to let us know that they’ve just completed a deal with Joost.
We weren’t expecting to be so Joost-tastic today, but when the news arrives, you’ve got to tell it.
Initially 35 hours will be made available comprising of their UK show, Ultimate Guinness World Records. It’s available to Joost viewers globally.
They haven’t hung around either in getting the content out. Checking the latest incarnation of Joost, we see that the content is up there already.
Additional content will be added on a monthly basis, with Guinness World Record (GWR) making the point that they’ll be “controlling its programming line-up on the platform.”
They’ve got 400 hours of it, so there’s plenty more to come.
Both sides are in back-slapping mode with Rob Molloy, Director of Television at Guinness World Records keen to keep the door open to deliver their content to other platforms by saying “We are thrilled to be partnering with a company as exciting as Joost, once again this shows how easily Guinness World Records content can be adapted to fit into so many areas of new media and for such varied audiences.”
Yvette Alberdingkthijm, EVP of content strategy and acquisition Joost took the pun-ing route of “We are delighted to have Guinness World Records on board and look forward to offering our viewers record breaking content.”
It’s interesting to realise that GWR TV is part of the HIT Entertainment who own the hugely popular children’s content Bob the Builder, Barney and Thomas the Tank Engine.
We wonder if this GWR deal is a tester for HIT, opening the doors for a much bigger deal to be coming out.
Joost went ‘off air’ yesterday – ie. no one could use it to access TV programmes.
All was revealed today as to why. The SSL certificates that are used to encrypt all communication between the clients and the Joost servers ran out, as certificates do each year.
Much to their embarrassment, Joost had hard-coded the details of the certificate into their client software. Now they’ve extracted it, they need to release a new build, hence the 0.9.2 release.
Knowing they’d be offline while the software was being rebuilt, they’ve upgraded their Long Term Storage machines replacing them with ones that are four times more efficient. They’re hoping this will straighten out any problems that might have been present with stuttering video delivery.
As Dirk-Willem from Joost says, “this is all part of being a beta.”
There’s a new version of Joost just out today – v0.9 – and amongst the changes, is the switch from using an email address to login to using a username.
Any of those who were slow getting on the Skype-train and ended up with a crummy username take note, you need to act fast to get your name of choice.
To add to the pressure of this, Joost are also giving an extra five invites away to each Joost Member, so the names are disappearing fast.
What else is different with the new version?
The first thing you’ll notice when it starts up is that it now opens in full screen.
The ident has been moved from its previous dominant central position to the bottom right hand corner. The upcoming programme name has now taken its place now middle centre.
There’s been a little fiddling with the icons. Of particular note is the design and function of the one to the right of the channel name. It still brings up the programmes that are available on the channel, but it now has a back button that takes you to a menu of channels – logical really.
Content rating also appears to have been added – or perhaps I haven’t previously looked at any content that needed rating.
Picking The Prodigy, Smack My Bitch Up (Live), I was met with a screen asking me to confirm that I was indeed over 18 (quite why it was needed to see this is anyone’s guess). Interestingly the muted video appeared to run in the background, while I was working out exactly just how old I was.
Those of you who have been watching the development of Joost, will notice that the adverts are getting just a little bit longer and more corporate. The latest addition appears to be an advert for IBM notebooks, while it is visually interesting (for the first viewing), it’s hardly cutting edge funk-ville.
The only downside we’ve found so far is that it crashes – not something that we had a problem with in Joost or The Venice Project before.
Ooo … and we’ve seen there’s a promo video up on the Joost site too (new to us). It’s here below for your delectation.
US media giant, Viacom, have struck a deal with Joost, the VOD TV to computer previously known as The Venice Project.
Joost is currently in beta, and it’s understood that the Viacom material will be available for the yet-undefined launch date of Joost. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Joost users will have financially-free access to the content. Joost users will ‘pay’ by being shown brief adverts, that we call blip-verts. They only last a couple of seconds and aren’t _that_ offensive, if the video pieces that are being watched aren’t too short.
The Viacom channels covered by the deal are MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Spike TV, Logo and BET.
Clearly Philippe Dauman, Viacom President and Chief Executive Officer, is showing his excitement at being involved, “We’re extremely pleased to be working with Joost, and couldn’t be prouder to be a key partner in the launch of the next generation in broadband video technology.” He’s not looking at the Joost deal as an exclusive though, “we’re determined to keep pushing and growing our digital presence and bring our programming to audiences on every platform and device that they want. In addition to strong partnerships we have with traditional distributors, we will continue to seek out partners like Joost, which has created an exciting breakthrough platform that represents not only a fantastic user experience, but one that is built on a compelling and sustainable business model that respects both content creators and consumers.”
All of this comes only a couple of week after Viacom threw their legal department at YouTube, insisting that they remove their content from the video sharing site and accused Google-owned YouTube of knowingly profiting from material stolen from them.
Joost recently introduced a version of Joost to run on Apple’s Mac. Version 0.8.0.1 for Mac came out on Monday, following a brief period in Alpha test. They describe it as looking “very much like Joost for Windows, while behaving very much like a Mac application.” A growing number of Mac Beta testers are complaining that the software only works on Intel-based Macs.
The next-market-to-disrupt target of the Skype/Kazaa founders – TV – has it’s latest news. The Venice Project’s working name has been changed to Joost, continuing their penchant for picking weird names – always a benefit when you want the domains(!).
As to the source/root of the name … ? Well it could be that their massive fans of ’80s video game Joust or perhaps it’s a reference to the German for a friendly ‘goodbye’, Tschüss. Who knows? FYI – It’s actually pronounced Juiced.
We’ve been fiddling with the Venice Project, sorry, Joost for a couple of weeks now, since Christopher Wood very kindly sent us an invite to join up.
We whacked it on an older (1.5GHz) machine and found that it really didn’t have the horsepower to run it properly. It’s a pretty greedy little number, even running out of steam on a 2.5GHz. The buzz around us beta testers is that currently, it _loves_ taking power/resources.
Clearly the Joost crew are seeing this as a product for the future (not a bad assumption), that will need to have a current processor to run it on. Queue computer and chip makers cheering and clapping.
A couple of beta testers are pointing and declaring that Joost will be the first failure of the founders. We think that it’s waaaaay to early to be calling that. Be patient my headline grabbing-friend and see how it turns out.
Let’s not forget 1) this is still in Beta, 2) Windows Media Centre was a total dog throughout many of its incarnation, taking years to get to the point where it was even usable.