Digital Home Thoughts: Bit-Tech: Turn up the Joost

"Most of us have had a TV moment (or several) in our lives. No, I don't mean one that would be great as a TV show, I mean a moment where the TV dominates your schedule. That time where we have to get home in order to watch a certain programme, lest we be left wondering what everyone is talking about 'round the water cooler. It's a problem I call "TVSM", for "Television Schedules Me." We've come a long way in our efforts to fix TVSM. Treatment options are now provided by your satellite or cable company in the form of TiVo, or in the On-Demand stations. Such technology allows us to turn TV on our schedule, allowing us to watch it when we would like and even fast-forward through obnoxious advertisements. The only problem with these technologies is that they can be expensive, while the MPAA and friends are finding new ways to stop you from recording the hottest programs. You can get around that with a home theatre PC, but there we get right back into expensive and a complicated learning curve to boot."



To put it very simply, Joost is to television what Napster (the legitimate new version) is to music -- a content service. There are 23 active channels on the service currently, covering everything from music videos to National Geographic specials. However, apparently it does have its share of problems - it tends to be laggy and the image can be quite blurry or may stick (not matter what the internet connection). The good news is that it is still in beta. So I think that they could get a lot better with more investment, if Apple and Microsoft were to incorporate this in with their iPod and Zune players respectively, a la Napster-to-go or some other Janus style service.