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Joost invites

Published

Tom Raftery

on 28/2/2007

in Web 2.0 and video

. 78 Comments

I have two Joost invites to give out.

They go to the first two people to leave a comment here.

Leave your name (first name and last name) and email (in the email field so it won’t be displayed)

Update: Invites sent to John Stephen and Jonathan Harrington - quick off the mark there guys, well done.

Update 2: Bizarrely Joost sent me another two invites so I have passed these on to the next two in the comments, Stephen and Jason. If I get any more, I’ll keep going down the names in the comments.

Update 3: Yet another invites this morning - going to Conall and Redmum

Joost updates, Viacom and social networking

Published

Tom Raftery

on 21/2/2007

in video

. 1 Comment

I posted the other day about Joost having released a client for Mac. Joost have since released an updated Mac client app which addresses a couple of issues with the first one. I have tried it out and find that the video is still quite jumpy - stopping and starting frequently which is something people won’t tolerate from TV programs.

Joost is still in beta though so I’m sure that will improve.

The big Joost story of the last couple of days was Joost’s deal with Viacom whereby Joost will be able to show some of Viacom’s content on launch.

From news.com’s report of the story:

The deal, announced Tuesday, is designed to bring television and theatrical content from Viacom’s brands–which include MTV Networks’ Comedy Central, as well as Black Entertainment Television and Paramount Pictures–to the Joost software upon its full launch.

The deal is limited, at least at first: many of Viacom’s most popular programs, such as Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report and South Park, will not be available initially. Some of the featured offerings, however, will be MTV’s My Super Sweet 16, Comedy Central’s Freak Show, BET’s American Gangster, as well as feature films from Paramount and its related brands.

No financial terms of the agreement were provided.

All well and good until I read Bernie’s take this morning - I think he was spot on when he said:

Joost lacks the social networking side of YouTube, where user views and user favourites count. The world needs a YouTube social network and the content makers need to have some revenue flow for their video productions.

James Corbett, disagrees though. James contends that:

there are also reports that Joost is in talks with British broadcasters ITV and Channel 4. Considering I can’t get Channel 4 here that would be a big win from my point of view. Which is why I disagree with Bernie Goldbach regarding the need for a social networking side.

See now James - that’s precisely why I think recommendation engines and other social tools would help Joost enormously. The more content Joost has, the harder it will be to find good shows and the more useful recommendations from people with similar taste will become.

Joost now available for Mac

Published

Tom Raftery

on 18/2/2007

in video

. 10 Comments

Joost is the new application from the makers of Skype which streams TV over the Internet to your computer.

I went to download the Windows version of Joost the other day, to try installing it in my Parallels VM (don’t bother - it doesn’t work) when I saw the following:

Finally, Joost for Mac has been released! Wohoo!

I downloaded Joost and ran it on the Mac.

It was a bit of a disappointment, I have to say. I wasn’t keen on it starting up in full screen mode but that is only a minor annoyance and quickly changed in the Preferences. The biggest letdown is the number of times the video stopped and started as it struggled to download the next chunk of the program.

My Internet connection is 3mb with a 20:1 contention ratio. I was watching on a Sunday morning so all should have been quiet and still the program couldn’t download the video fast enough. This makes for an irritating viewing experience.

I don’t know if this problem is peculiar to the Mac version or it is an issue with Joost in general. If it is not Mac specific, it needs to be fixed somehow or watching TV programs on the computer through Joost won’t catch on.

Microsoft ruins Christmas!

Published

Tom Raftery

on 26/12/2006

in Gadgets, hardware and video

. 19 Comments

I decided a while back to treat myself to a games console for Christmas and after some discussion, I settled on an Xbox 360. I would have bought a Wii except it doesn’t have a usable optical drive and we don’t have a DVD drive so I wanted the games console to double as a DVD drive.

I bought a Pro Console with wireless controllers to cut down on the cable clutter. I bought Viva Pinata and Pixar’s Cars which I could play with my three year old son TomÃ¡s (Cars is one of TomÃ¡s’ favourite movies).

He was very excited he was going to play these games as soon as his papa had set up the new Xbox on Christmas day.

Imagine the tears rolling down his disappointed little face when I had to tell him that he couldn’t play with his new games because the Xbox wouldn’t work with our TV (pdf).

I called Microsoft’s Support line and kudos to them for having it manned on Christmas day but the news wasn’t good. The staff there informed me that I needed to purchase a high def adaptor if I wanted my high definition games console to work on my high definition tv. Obviously.

And it is not that they wouldn’t work in high definition only, no they wouldn’t work in high def or regular.

And where could I get one of these? “At your nearest Xbox reseller” - yeah good luck finding one of those open on Christmas day.

This is completely ridiculous - this is a problem created by Microsoft. There is already a standard in place around high definition cabling. It is called HDMI. HD Ready TVs have a HDMI input, by definition. All Microsoft had to do was put a standard HDMI connector on their AV cable and their Xbox would work on every HD Ready TV out of the box.

But no, Microsoft go with their non-standard cable so they can gouge us for another 30 or 40 Euros.

In our house, Microsoft is not the Borg, Microsoft is the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Thanks a million Microsoft. Your cheapness destroyed my son’s Christmas.

Venice Project beta doesn’t include Macs

Published

Tom Raftery

on 22/12/2006

in Technology, iptv and video

. 5 Comments

Along with the rest of the world, it seems, I received my invite to try out the beta of the Venice Project. This is an IPTV project set up by Kazaa and Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (so straight away you have to start taking it seriously).

Mike Arrington has written it up on TechCrunch, Om Malik has posted some screenshots and a glowing report on its functionality and James Corbett has gloated that he had an invite long before the A-Listers!

It all looks interesting but unfortunately I can’t use it. Why? The system requirements call for a machine running Windows XP with Service Pack 2. No Mac software!