Joost, and other TV platforms

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Posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 7:29pm. #

CC licenced from Thomas van de Weerd - that’s Joost in the background

I can’t quite work out whether I can blog about Joost - the free software that gives you lots of on-demand TV straight to your PC or Intel Mac.

Assuming we all can now, then I’m really enjoying the content on Joost now - there’s a ton more content. For example - Boothby Graffoe, in an episode of Just of Laughs is just excellent, and there’s three Muse videos on there, so I’m quite happy. And the quality is just fine; and when it works, it works fantastically. It’s so good I’m seriously thinking about upgrading the MacMini under the telly to be an Intel one, just so we can have Joost on the television too. It’s way better than YouTube.

The ads are now quite interesting: I’ve seen ads for Vauxhall cars, as well as for Virgin Money. They’re all short - sometimes only three or four seconds. They work really well, though are rather irritatingly repeated.

To get Joost, you need an invite. The good news is that I (like virtually every other user) has unlimited invites. If you want one, just contact me or comment on this blog. It’s really good. And it’s free.

This ties in to what I did today - I went to a secret location where we played with all of the TV platforms, just so I could understand how these things worked - particularly for radio. I saw Sky, Telewest/Virgin, TopUpTV, Tiscali, BT Vision, and a few others which are probably a little more secret. What was interesting is Tiscali’s service, which has a beautiful set-top box, a really nice remote, and some quite innovative features, albeit a sad lack of interactivity for television. Virgin TV, in the guise here of a Telewest box, was poor and slow - and I can’t for the life of me work out who watches a poor selection of music videos on Virgin TV for 40p each.

What I found most interesting was the poor attention paid to radio on these platforms. I can watch ‘Lost’ at any time I want on Sky Anytime TV; I can watch similar programmes on Virgin, Tiscali, or BT Vision. However, I can’t access any radio content apart from live stuff. Why can’t I enjoy The Archers at any time of the day or night? Why is the Hit40 not available to listen-to again, when I can enjoy the best of the TV channels? Why is it virtually impossible to record radio? Why is the EPG detail for Virgin Radio written so badly? Depressing, particularly given the figures for radio on these platforms.

Tags: bt_vision, joost, sky, television, tiscali_tv, top_up_tv, tv, youtube | Permalink | Comments RSS | Leave a response, or trackback.

4 comments

Ash said at May 15th, 2007 at 9:38pm

It’s historic I think.

Radio has always been second class where television has been involved. In the days of analogue cables, it was no different with FM hook-ups, and the old analogue Astra and the audio sub-channels. Radio is only treated by the platform providers as a secondary, and so will only get secondary treatment.

If the stations, or the RadioCentre got together I suspect they could make enough noise to get things sorted out, if they really cared. For as long as platform providers can get away with treating radio as a second class, they will.

Jimmy Buckland said at May 16th, 2007 at 8:45am

Clearly for radio the bottom line with all these platforms comes down to cost (including music rights), and commercial stations need to be sure that the sums are going to add up.

Who writes the EPG detail for Virgin Radio? Presumably you could get that fixed couldn’t you James?

Will O'Connor said at May 16th, 2007 at 9:28am

Radio licensing is restricted by the music rights - the broadcaster doesn’t have the authority to distribute songs in an on-demand basis (it comes back to the illegal ‘recording’ of tracks).

Not sure about home-grown stuff like the Archers. As produced by the Beeb it should own the license, so it shoule be relavtively simple to provide for download (if they can do it for Chris Moyles’ rants, they should be able to do it for somethign like the Archers).

I’d be very interested if you were able to send me an invitation to Joost. I was on the trial for BableGum and am keen to compare the two.

phil Mackie said at May 28th, 2007 at 1:56pm

As someone who works in radio, It can be really frustrating that we are somtiemes feel like we are the last people to get new platforms to broadcast on. Though podcasting has been a proactive way of creating on-demand radio, the more traditional-style broadcasting platforms still dominate. On-demand radio is just around the corner. I can already access any programme broadcast on any of the main BBC networks including World Service during the past 4 months, but it’s only available through our own secure BBC intranet at the moment. It won’t be for much longer.

I’m interested in signing up to Joost, but need an invite from a member. Any ideas?

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Joost, and other TV platforms

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