Joost - great application but no content
Back in January I wrote that:
Joost is on very shaky ground. The content is going to be the sort of second-rate, mass-market slop that's been killing the concept of the TV channel and raising the importance of the TV show for the last few years. And you won't even be able to record it like you could back in the 1980s.
although I hadn't tried the system then. I got a Joost invitation today, downloaded the application and tried to watch something.
Firstly, I should say that the application is absolutely beautiful. I think it has everything that I could want in a video watching application. It was intuitive to use, responsive and looks incredibly slick. No really. It looks absolutely fabulous.
Of course, the first thing I tried to do was watch a show. Any show. And nothing worked. I tried playing different shows from different channels and they all came up with the same error screen - sadly not so slick.
And it's entirely unclear why it's not working. I doubt it's a lack of bandwidth because I managed to download the player quite fast and I've been doing all sorts of other bandwidth intensive activities. I also doubt the Indonesian government has content filters that block Rocky & Bullwinkle. So maybe it's that Joost won't let me watch content when I'm outside of their service area? I don't know. I'll try again when I'm in KL and then back in Amsterdam. But frankly, I'm disappointed that I've only been able to see a sexy application and haven't been able to watch my 'toons.
