Taking another look at Joost

It has been a few months since I used Joost for the last time and I thought it would be a good time to take another look at Joost considering the announcement that they would go live at the end of the year with almost one million beta testers. A post at the Cybernet Blog also called my attention where Ashley asked if someone was actually still using Joost.

I had to admit that I was one of the beta testers that did not use Joost at all anymore and wanted to take a look to see what has changed in the meantime. I can sum it up pretty quickly though and was a little bit disappointed that my old criticism was still holding true.

Joost added some more channels to the system but still does not offer any premium content channels. The channels that are offered, lets take Gong TV, Guinness World Records or Watch Mojo are programs that appeal to only a handful of users at best. You find better entertainment at sites like Youtube for instance.

Joost offers some niche channels that might appeal to a wider audience such as the World Poker Tour channel with old poker tournament videos or the NHL 2007 playoff channel. Most channels however are really disappointing.

I can’t say that the image quality has improved in the few months that passed by, it still looks not that nicely fullscreen. Better than Youtube videos fullscreen but no comparison to real TV or HD content on the Internet.

I still have hopes that they will deliver better content at the time that they are going public with their software - make a big announcement perhaps that raises interest in the service. I promise that I will take another look in a few months or when they make a new announcement / release a new version.

Joost invites are still available, if you want some let me know.