Joost: on-demand, social Internet television for Windows and OS X

Joost is currently private beta software that intends to bring a richer television viewing experience (for free) to users around the world, with high-quality content, social features, and minimal advertising. Joost was formerly known as The Venice Project, and deserves your attention because it is the latest software from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis of Skype and Kazaa. You’d guess correctly if you guessed the developers have leveraged some of their peer-to-peer knowledge and experience from those two applications to help create a high-frame rate, high-resolution television viewing experience in Joost. The private beta has been opened up to many people, so there are myriad reviews and screenshots available by searching elsewhere. I’ll skip the screenshots (official Joost screenshots here) and stick with my experience testing Joost over the last few weeks.

Unlike Democracy which I covered previously (another cross-platform application that helps users find interesting video content over the web),Joost streams content, letting users jump forward and backward, as opposed to downloading. Users are not burdened with waiting for content to download or having gigabytes of files on their local machines. Content onJoost is of lower quality than if it were downloaded, but is watchable almost instantly, a trade-off most people would be willing to make for due to the convenience. Joost offers a channel guide similar to other applications, DVRs, and set-top boxes, and even worked with my Windows Media Center remote, enhancing my user experience. I’m hoping they announce official support for various remote controls. Unlike Democracy (or YouTube), Joost does not broadcast user-submitted video, but instead is partnering with big name media companies (like Viacom) to offer some of the same content available on traditional television (along with some of the same advertisements). TheJoost website notes that they may support user-uploaded content in the future, but for the moment they are concentrating on content from well-known TV brands.

If you want technical details like which video codec Joost uses, or which open source software helps power Joost, check out this FAQ: Technology page and the Joost Open Source site. Joost discloses how much bandwidth the application will use on their FAQ page as well, warning Windows users that the application continues to run even when it is closed (in the system tray).

In one hour of viewing, approximately 320Mb data will be downloaded and 105Mb uploaded, which means that it will exhaust a 1Gb cap in 10 hours.

I’ve been moving between version numbers, .90 and .91 most recently, and was disappointed to see that Joost didn’t remember my favorite channel preferences between new installations. By the time the software releases, I would hope they have an automatic-upgrade between versions (not available at present). As of the .90 release I was given 5 tokens (download links) to share with friends, similar to how Gmail grew their beta software. As of .90 Joost requires a username and password to log-in to the application. Hopefully this is a one-time setup requirement at public release.

Joost supports Windows XP SP2/Vista and Intel-based OS X computers (PPC version is in the works) as of this writing. My testing was on my older PC, a AMD 2500+ with 1GB RAM and an ATI 9600 video card, on a residential broadband internet connection. A Linux client and they invite interested users to sign-up for their newsletter. I was initially impressed with the quality, which varied between 4×3 and widescreen aspect ratios. Some content was blocky like a YouTube video, while other content was higher-resolution and smooth. My older hardware seemed to handle the bandwidth and processing requirements, and I would expect that newer hardware would result in improve quality (though I haven’t found details about how content might be adjusted based on client hardware/bandwidth).

Joost detects your location based on your IP address. I am not aware of other information that the software might be sending back to Joost, their FAQ page is vague about information they collect from your machine to improve the service. Location detection is necessary to ensure that shows that are approved only for a specific region of the World are only showed to that region. That being the case, I was pleased to see that there is content from other countries (outside the USA) available onJoost.

Social features

Joost introduces a concept new to me: instant messaging over the Internet while watching television. In theory this could be neat, though as of this beta release, I couldn’t find anyone to chat with. I tried the National Geographic, Guinness Records, Fifth Gear and MTV channels, and while I found as many as 8 guests in the chat room, no one would respond to my messages. I could see where this could be fun for certain people that don’t mind typing and may be watching television alone, but many people watch television to relax and would probably not be interested in instant messaging (much less with strangers from around the world).

Widgets

Joost ships with some basic widgets like a Clock, similar in look to widgets for OS X or Konfabulator (Yahoo! Widgets). Currently widget development is not available to the public, though the Joost page mentions that a developer kit will be released in the future.

Advertisements

The Joost website says (regarding advertisements): they are necessary to offer viewers free television, they cannot be skipped, and there will be less of them than traditional television. In my experience, I saw advertisements from Eclipse and Orbitz chewing gum, Garnier hair products, and T-Mobile wireless. The advertisements were generally one motionless screen, and some advertisements had audio. Though they can’t be skipped, I did not find the advertisements intrusive or too frequent.

Content!

The most important part of this software, what will ultimately lead to its success or failure, is whether Joost can deliver high-quality content. Convincing users to watch television on their computer is a challenge. Without high-quality content and a convenient interface (remote control support), the software will not see the large adoption that Skype and Kazaa did.

Over the last few weeks, I’d rate the content in general as “mediocre.” To the credit of Joost, I’m sure that most of the challenge in delivering on their promise of “television-replacement software” is coordinating the content and advertising to broadcast, not the software itself or the infrastructure it takes to run Joost. In other words, Joost has more of a political than technical challenge facing it.

I was excited to see familiar networks (Viacom) being represented: MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, but was disappointed to find out that the content from these networks is of low interest to me, and generally is only 2-3 shows total per network. For example as of this writing, MTV has two shows available through Joost: Laguna Beach and Two-a-Days, neither of which I care for (to be fair, I’m not really in the target demographic). Comedy Central, the home of my favorite program “The Daily Show”, shows just a few shows, one being Stella, a show which looks to be just out of its first season. After looking through some other networks like National Geographic, Fifth Gear (UK car review show), Guinness World Records, various live and “behind the scenes” types of music shows, it appears to me that most of the content is of low market value. That isn’t necessarily bad though, as the number of viewers of a traditional television show does not necessarily indicate quality or general appeal. There is certainly room for newcomer and independent content, though Joost works hard to promote only their most widely-recognized content, and has a lot of “filler.”

I was planning to write my favorite Joost shows here, though I lost the channels I’d set-up as my favorites when upgrading to a newer version. Some of the content I enjoy is Fifth Gear, a UK show with 3-minute video reviews of cars, various shows like “Everest” on the National Geographic channel that are lengthier (one hour or more) and educational, and some of the live and behind-the-scenes music shows, although most are of artists I’ve never heard of.

Industry pundit John Dvorak took a look at Joost (note: his review was prior to the Viacom content like MTV, Comedy Central available on Joost), and really didn’t like it. He basically argued that Kazaa and Skype did not have to acquire top television content to be successful, so the developers behind Joost, while they have software and legal experience, don’t have experience acquiring content. What remains to be seen is the content available on Joost when it goes public.

Joost is a nice-looking application with technical challenges like remote control integration, scalability (as it moves out of private beta), ease of upgrades between versions, cross-platform support, content protection for content owners (no saving of shows locally), but also has numerous political challenges facing it, like acquiring first-rate content, while keeping advertising relevant and displayed at a frequency that satisfies content owners and Joost users. My recommendation is to wait until the application is out of beta. Joost has potential to satisfy those looking for a free television-alternative, that are willing to put up with trade-offs of watching television on a computer. If you’d like to keep up with Joost developments, add the Joost blog to your feed reader.