Joost

I've been hearing about Joost for weeks now, but have never really been interested in it. The thing that got me to try it was a Slashdot post about ISPs spoiling online video. Having first hand experience with TM's crappy broadband service, the last100 article intrigued me.

Almost all the methods that they describe on how ISPs are saving their bandwidth, TM is doing it, and the worst part is Malaysians don't really have an alternative ISP. Sure there's Maxis broadband, but I've heard it's almost as crappy as TM's but with better customer service and higher monthly rates. And don't get me started on how far behind we are compared with other countries in the region.

Anyway, let's get back to Joost. Joost is an online tv service. It has channels like normal tv, and it's free just like normal tv. Joost is still an invitation-only service, but you can get an invite fairly easily. Just do a Google search, which I did, and the easiest link I found was this: Joost - Please invite me! Give an email address, click on the link, download it.... you know, the usual stuff. It installed without a hitch.

The first thing I noticed about it was the video quality - it is incredible. For streaming content, the quality is just amazing. This is no YouTube or Metacafe or any other of those short clips, low quality video sites. Joost holds true to their claim, it's actual TV, only on the net.

It started off with some video showing what's on tv and stuff, but they set the volume at full blast by default. That's not good. The user interface is fairly intuitive, it took me a few seconds to figure out how to hide/show the UI controls.

After messing with the UI, I looked to see what channels were available, and low and behold, one of them was Sports Illustrated Swimsuit on Demand. What more can I say. I watched through the first model's profile, then they showed that the next model was going to be Ana Beatriz Barros. I'm a huge fan of her, so I continued watching. But once she started talking, I wasn't as compelled to watch it anymore. I should stick to looking at her pictures, and avoid her videos. I switched to the Gamestar channel. It all went fine but after a few seconds, the stream started to be choppy. Maybe it's because it was a higher quality stream or maybe a longer show, I don't know.

Ana Beatriz Barros

Overall, I'm really impressed with Joost, and I may get around to watching it again, but it may cause my ISP to cap my bandwidth usage. It really felt like tv for some reason, not like when I'm watching a video file. While I was sitting and watching it, something in my brain gave out a signal that this is tv. I don't get that feeling when watching tv shows that I've downloaded. This could very well be the future of tv, but will people of the future would want to watch tv? Who knows.