I read an article recently in someone from the Writers Guild of America was covering the subject of the lack of appreciation for contemporary film and TV writers, his idea was that modern technology would offer them the opportunity to steer around the large networks and televise directly online. My train of thought then wandered to the future of conventional movies and TV so I immediately hopped online to do some research on how close this was to coming true.
I very quickly got sidetracked when I stumbled across an application called 'Joost' which is still in beta (testing) stage; after spending over an hour playing around I decided that it would make a good inclusion for Click. You may remember that, several years ago, I reviewed an application called TVexe which was good in principal but lacking in the design of the user interface. Joost is very much along the same lines as TVexe in the way that it brings together hundreds of different TV channels from both on and off the web but it does it in a much more user friendly and organised fashion.
The user interface of Joost is unlike a conventional Windows application in that it launches up in full screen mode, and there aren't any drop-down user menus to speak of. What you are presented with instead is an interface that looks more like Windows Media Centre with large, self explanatory icons which seamlessly hide themselves when not required. I personally think that the interface is very slick and makes navigating through the channels and programming as easy as when using a conventional TV.
According to their website, Joost includes more than 20,000 shows and the list is growing daily. Unlike a large amount of Internet programming, Joost is a relatively closed platform, and as such it is ultimately up to them what material users can and cannot get access to. There is, for instance, no facility to upload your own amateur footage however I think that this can potentially be seen as a positive thing because as a result it may achieve greater approval by mainstream audiences. Open programming is fantastic because it gives everybody a voice but we already have YouTube, and I like the fact that Joost is seemingly more like conventional and commercial television.
On the subject of commercial, I should point out that Joost is supported by a very small amount of advertising. Whilst I wouldn't usually recommend a piece of advertising supported software, I appreciate that revenue is required at times and companies can't always be expected to give us something for nothing. Joost is a piece of commercial software by the co-owners of Skype and as their first venture since eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, I'm not surprised they have expectations of making some money from this. The advertising is very, very minimal and is no where near as much as on conventional TV so as long as it stays this way then I'm happy.
As far as selecting what programs you wish to watch, Joost isn't like normal TV as it's not transmitted live. Instead of turning the telly on at a specific time you just choose a channel and then you will be given a list of programming for that channel and can select what you wish to watch from the start.
The software is still in beta mode and as such it wasn't the most stable application that I've ever used and it has to be said that the quality of the video isn't presently up to what we would expect to see on TV. This having been said, I am excited by this application as it is the closest I've seen to Internet TV being a sustainable commercial enterprise. Unfortunately I haven't had time to scratch the surface of what this application can offer but I think it will be one that will really be worth downloading, providing you have a broadband connection. It is available from www.joost.com for both Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X computers and consists of a relatively small 10mb download.
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