Joost

I've been using the Joost BETA now for little over a week. For those that don't know, Joost is a IPTV application from the makers of Skype, which combines P2P technology with traditional streaming to deliver (supposedly) DVD quality, full-screen, free TV.

It is ad-based, with one 30 second ad every 10-15 min, which is much less than on normal TV. One problem I'm hoping they can fix is that the ads start randomly, sometimes even in the middle of a word.

The promised DVD quality isn't there. Some show are almost DVD quality, like a documentary about snakes (did you know snakes come with built in optical zoom?), while other fast-paced shows like Indy car racing is unwatchable, due to the compression artifacts. Bandwidth wise it uses, if I got all the numbers and math correct, 700 kbps down and 230 kbps up.

It is nice, easy to use, no more complicated than a media player. Vector based interface, meaning it zooms bigger without any problems. At the moment channels work like simple playlists, which works fine when there still is only a little content, but they will have to do something about it if they get a lot more content, which hopefully they will.

What about the content, then, you ask? Mostly a bunch of smaller independent channels. A couple of better known ones like Comedy Central (not available here), National Geographic (not available here) and Gong. CBS has signed up to show CSI, CSI: NY and CSI: Miami, NCIS, Numb3rs, Jericho and Survivor.