Turn up the Joost

Initial thoughts

It seems that Joost is a great evolution for on-demand TV, but it has quite a few kinks to work out still. The problem is, it seems like the kinks have less to do with Joost and more to do with the concept as a whole, and that leads to some worrisome quality issues.

As far as what Joost can control, the service is doing everything right. The interface is easy and slick, it's a joy to use and it has a learning curve somewhere in the negatives. If you can power up your computer, you can use this service. This, to me, is a linchpin for the success of Joost -- all you're doing is watching TV, so if it isn't as easy as flipping on the television and picking your show, it's bound to have problems.

These strengths are further added to by a strong backing of channels and content. The depth isn't there yet, but the breadth is already showing. The big issue is getting the big boys to want to play ball, and it looks like Joost already has a couple on the court. If it can wrangle in the support of even one major US network like NBC, it will have everything it needs to make one hell of a splash. Mix that in with light ad revenue from non-intrusive ads and you have something that could bring cable to its knees.

Unfortunately, where Joost falls short is the technology behind the service. Maybe it needs more quality levels of content, maybe it needs some user selectivity of that content. What's for sure is that the current model is jarring to the point of almost painful. One second, it's a beautiful, clear and crisp image. The next second, it's a blob-filled mess. These huge swings back and forth would be visible to anyone with a "normal" internet connection, which is presumably exactly who Joost is targeting. Most people wouldn't be able to tolerate the quality swings, pauses and sync problems that the service is currently grappling with.

Joost also could really do with a purchase option similar to the iTunes model. Of course, if you managed to fix the quality issues, people would likely maintain their subscription, but it's nice to purchase some content for archival purposes or even to get a higher image quality than bandwidth would normally allow. It would also be nice for those of us who travel and would like to take some content with us on long plane flights or areas where Internet service is less than stellar. This addition would nicely round out a feature-set that so far has only been afforded to music or bit-torrent users, and I think it's a requirement if any service would like to dig in as an affordable alternative to ill-gotten methods.

As it stands, the service is a great start looking for some added features before it goes prime-time. To me, this is a bit more like a late alpha than a late beta, as it is still too close to "proof of concept" for my taste were advertisers to pony up money to use the service. Joost stands on the brink between just what we need to move to Internet content and not quite enough to pay for, and by launch it really needs to not be the latter any longer. I hope that by the time we hit version 1.0 and money starts changing hands, Joost will be a lot closer to its potential.