I have been playing around with the latest upgrades to my Joost™ beta trial lately. I like the user interface but I’m not sure I fit the target demographic.
The variety of content currently available on Joost is woefully inadequate, possibly due to the beta nature of the product at this time. It makes me wonder about the entire concept of their content distribution model.
How do you get live sports (a major challenge for compressed content), news, current affairs. Will any of these be coming?
What about access to new release programming, movies, etc.? Without these, I can’t see how anyone could consider cancelling their current TV distribution supplier.
Joost may prove that they can technically distribute video, but isn’t the real question whether people want to watch. With people moving their entertainment to HD large screens, I don’t think the Joost quality is good enough.
Is Joost an example of what I have called ‘The Iridium Syndrome’ – an engineering-led solution solving a non-existent problem resulting in massive flushing of cash?
One would think that IP TV, in whatever form, would be especially well suited for random access to archival programs, combined with a feature rich search engine capability. Something like entering “Lucille Ball chocolate factory” or “NASA moon Armstrong steps” or “Gomer Pyle”. What about a search for “Beatles Ed Sullivan 1963”. Am I showing my demographic prejudice?
Sorting programs into channels is something we have today. Our current broadcast distribution technologies are optimized to do a great job of delivering channels.
It is unclear to me that Joost is delivering enough on its potential to be a truly disruptive force. Random access and searching the universe of existing program libraries strikes me as more worthwhile for users and a more disruptive leap forward.