Internet TV: Joost
Apr 26th, 2008 by brianschettler
If you have a broadband connection, you can probably watch TV over the internet. I have a media PC set up in my living room that runs Joost. While the programming may not be *quite* prime time just yet, it does provide some good entertainment. When I first joined about a year ago, Joost only ran small, 4-5 second ads and some small overlay ads in the corner occasionally. Now they have full 30-sec commercials (which often repeat…argh!). They also have overlay ads that (sadly) take up almost a quarter of the screen now. But even so, it is free.
There are many channels to explore on Joost. They have a few mainstream shows and clips of shows. There some old stuff too that’s nice such as the original Star Trek, Twilight Zone, and MacGuyver. They even have the old Transformers cartoons. I’ve found myself watching some of the poker and cooking channels (yes I know, they go hand in hand!). Until you don’t have cable, you don’t realize how unnerving it is to not have a TV in the background. This helps fill the gap.
One of my biggest gripes is that the keyboard controls are not very good. I have a wireless keyboard so I’d like to be able to completely navigate Joost sans mouse. It is somewhat usable, but it seems switching shows is near random. I’d also really like to see the ability to change the text size, since the show info is unreadable on my standard-def TV.
All in all, Joost is pretty cool to play around with. It’s open-beta now, so anyone can join. I’ve never really noticed too much of a slowdown while using Joost, but you probably better make sure you’re not using any other bandwidth-intensive programs. The internet is the future of TV.