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.
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Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?