John Menick

A few months ago I received my invitation to use Joost, a new, legal peer-to-peer distribution software for Web video. Although hyped (by Joost execs) as both the future of television and streaming video, my initial experience was extremely disappointing, mostly due to the exclusive presence of corporate content. Thinking Joost might expand its content in the coming months, I decided to let some time pass before I tried it again. Last night I checked back, and sure enough nothing has changed. Crucially, most of the programming available to watch is already on the cable stations I refuse to pay for in the first place. I watched about 10 minutes all together and closed the future of Web TV for yet another three months.

The biggest problem with Joost is that the software is open source, but the content is not. Everything you watch is vetted, and the system only utilizes peer-to-peer technology to solve bandwidth issues. There is the much bragged about, and much yawned at, chat function, but as has been said before, I hope someone at Joost HQ brought up during the design meetings that you can already chat while watching TV. (I personally don’t do either separately very much, let alone together.) Otherwise, it’s like TV with a search function, except instead of the search returning surprising results, you get MTV and Comedy Central shows you already knew about and don’t watch.

So what is this software all about? How can small content producers have anything to do with such a locked-down distribution system, and would they even want to? This all could be some highly out-of-touch corporate fantasy, a kind of inverted Kazaa or YouTube, but even if we compare Joost to preexisting television, and ignore the Web, it still makes little sense. Why, if I can watch cable television at a higher resolution and record anything I like, would I bother with hiccup-plagued, unrecordable Joost? It’s almost as if Viacom, CBS, et al. sat down and decided that the best way to conquer the Web was to help develop a system worse than the one they already have.

I’m most likely not the demographic. Maybe Joost hopes its appeal skews young, to a generation of people who might actually chat while watching television. Then again, this this could also be about catching people at a time when they don’t get the chance to watch television they can control. In other words, this is a television station for people with laptops in cafes, airports, waiting rooms, etc. Viacom and others probably figure they can get a new audience for TV that has been locked out due to spacial and technological issues, not cultural ones. For someone who likes this content, I guess it could be seen as better than nothing, but as a full-on replacement or competitor to TV, I’ll stick with the low-res, broad-content YouTube.