My $10 on Joost
March 2nd, 2007 by HenI downloaded a version of The Venice Project sometime back onto my rarely used Windows XP laptop. Started it up, adapted to the interface, looked through the content, found only really one bit of content that I liked which was a Green Day video, so I sat and watched that while working on the Mac. Good news is that it worked pretty happily on my underpowered graphics card. Things were a bit choppy, but I put that down to network rather than the machine.
I enjoyed watching that, especially given that I only have 20 channels of cable and they’re complete crap. I didn’t turn it on again, mostly because I didn’t get any feeling that there would be new content. I recently upgraded to the Joost install and yes, there wasn’t much new content. One has to feel that the BBC/YouTube deal is a big loss for Joost. The advertising was the same each time - for chewing gum of some kind.
However…. there’s a however to this story. I watched the one video concerning Green Day performing American Idiot in concert. It’s an album I’d heard of but never bothered with. I liked it - so I bought it from Amazon for whatever cost it was ($10->$15). In fact it’s my “live life” album at the moment to enthuse me into doing things (James’ Laid is my “life sucks” album for when I cba to do anything).
So on that level of things, Joost is a success. I watched one video. I spent $10 because of it.