Joost Now Flash Based

Joost was previously only accessible by using a video player that had to be downloaded. That seemed to fail to bring in the desired user numbers and Joost decided to drop the software client and create a web based Flash portal with all their contents. The transition phase which ended yesterday required users to install a plugin to view shows but as of now everyone with an up to date Flash plugin can watch the shows at the Joost website.
One of the initial advantages of Joost was the software client. Yes, it had its problems but it provided interesting features that are hard to impossible to realize in a web client. For one, switching between channels and shows was more or less instant, the web client delays requests because that is how the web works.
Users do need an account before they can watch any show on the website which is one of the big drawbacks of the system. The other drawback is the lack of mainstream media. Yes, you find some tv shows that are free to watch for users from authorized countries but there is not a lot mainstream wise that you cannot watch somewhere else on the Internet.
What Joost needs more than anything else is killer content. Not necessarily tv series like 24 or Alias. It could be something more geeky exotic like a huge Anime archive or Independent movies. There should also be room for educational content.
Joost cannot compete with Youtube because of the sheer mass and sites like Hulu because of their content.
Update: Joost is gone, more or less. You receive a "pause" notification on the site stating that the company is re-evaluating its service. The message has been up for quite some time now and it is not really clear if the project has been abandoned completely or if it will be relaunched in the future.
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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?