Joost releases app for iPhone
Joost seemed to have a chance to joust with marketplace leaders as recently as a year ago, but fell on hard times. The video start-up, the brain child of Niklas Zennström (founder of Skype) and Janus Friis (founder of Kazaa) seemed to lose traction before it ever got out of the box. Now things are looking up again. Joost has announced an application that will allow customers to stream all Joost content onto the iPhone for free.
Joost has over 45,000 videos on offer, many of them premium content such as full-length films and television shows from a wide variety of sources. Their content includes films like Starship Troopers and Sleepless in Seattle and television episodes like The Daily Show and Friends, plus a large number of specialty videos. Despite recent deals signed by YouTube for premium content, the Joost library of videos seems to have greater breadth.
Even though YouTube has an iPhone app, they cannot yet compete with Joost’s content on that very important platform. Given the popularity and high profile of the iPhone, the new Joost iPhone app could put the newer, smaller video service back on the map. CNET News reports that there are some quirks in the user interface on the iPhone, but none of them are deal-breakers.
The Joost application was originally built within a P2P TV framework. It therefore required users to be running Windows or OS X on an Intel platform. However, in October they changed to a Flash-based interface which runs directly inside the user’s browser. This make Joost services available to all platforms and browsers which support Flash 9, including Windows, Mac and Linux.
The combination of content and a good iPhone applications should put Joost back into the spotlight. Handled properly, this could be the opportunity that Joost needs to claim additional market share in the crowded and ultra-competitive video arena. It would appear that Joost has taken the lead from Hulu and Netflix on the high-profile iPhone. It remains to be seen if they can parlay that into a role as a prime content video market leader.
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November 29th, 2008
Hi,
Since October, we switched to Flash based in browser direct streaming of content – so now it also works on PPC Mac, Linux and other platforms which have Flash 9 support.
thanks
Andrew
November 29th, 2008
Thanks. I missed that change!
December 4th, 2008
Download set top boxes and download portable players ( ie Blockbuster, Apple TV, VUDU, Hulu, Joost, PS3, XBOX ) are a thing of the past, only to be replaced by the technology used by service providers such as MyTVPAL ( http://www.mytvpal.com ) and Netflix ( http://www.netflix.com ).
Service providers like MyTVPAL offer 1080p instant blu-ray streaming video on demand and live tv over PC Player, set top box, and I think they will have a portable device out soon.
Keep in mind also that P2P is on the way out because it uses to much bandwidth, both up and down, and is unstable. I’m refering to service providers such as VUDU ( a one trick pony ) and Joost, who latest foray into portable video on demand on the itouch / iphone is frezing, buffering, and providing a horrible user experience even on my 6mbps connection.
Streaming video is a great addition for live tv an video on demand, but at the end of the day only those technology companies like Matrixstream ( http://www.matrixstream.com ) will be able to support the best quality over the best effort public internet when doing a triple play ( set top box, PC Player, and portable device ) because currently where Netflix requires 8mbps for 720p streaming, MyTVPAL can support 720p streaming a 3mbps and 1080p blu-ray streaming at 6mbps.
Keep the above in mind when considering the average person today in the United States and Canada has between 1.5 – 3.0Mbps. So While MyTVPAL can service the majority of broadband users today in the United States and Canada in both 720p and 1080p today it will be years before Netflix can service a fraction of the broadband population in high definition instant video streaming.
At the end of the Day service providers such as Netflix and Blockbuster will have evolve to provide a service like MyTVPAL or suffer the consequences of not providing low bandwidth, instant playing, 1080p blu-ray high definition platform that we’ve come to expect from MyTVPAL ( http://www.mytvpal.com ) on PC Player, set top box, and soon I would imagine, portable player.
Comment Guy