joost

You know, normally when a software company releases version 1.0 that means it's time for the product to leave beta. But Joost 1.0 is out this weekend, and it's still in private beta. That means you can only download a copy if you're already a beta tester or have a friend who's willing to share an invite.

And that might not be such a bad thing, because despite the new 1.0 label, Joost is still definitely beta software. Version 1.0 sports a redesigned interface, improved performance with low-performing internt connections, and an integrated update service so you won't need to download an installer from the web next time you want to install a new release.

Or at least, that's what the release notes say. We weren't able to see the new interface on either of our test rigs running Windows Vista. While we followed the directions requiring Vista users to install Joost 1.0 as an administrator, we couldn't get the channel menu to show up. When Joost 1.0 loads, it automatically begins playing the last video we'd been watching. But if you want to change channels or switch to another video in the same channel, you're out of luck. Or at least we are. Anyone have a better experience with this "update?"

Update: It looks like Joost has added a download link to their front page, meaning the public beta has begun. No more invitations needed. Also, a few days into the beta, we noticed that our difficulty pulling up the channel guide has disappeared. Perhaps it was a network congestion issue, but the beta seems to be working well now. And finally, Joost has added links to featured content to their web page. Want to watch La Femme Nikita episodes? Just click the "play now" button to launch Joost and the show will begin to play.

[via eFluxMedia]

Microsoft is showing off its new Internet TV platform at Digital Life, a whole one day before the service is rolled out to every Windows Vista machine.

Here's the good news: It looks pretty cool and dramatically increases the amount of internet video you can access from within the Windows Vista Media Center interface. Here's the bad news: The content is only kind of interesting.

While we were hoping to see Microsoft take on Joost and VeohTV here by offering full length streaming episodes of TV, so far the only content you can access is the same material available via MSN Video. That means the only TV series you can watch is Arrested Development and while there's a movies section, it currently includes nothing but trailers.

There are full length music concerts, and links to content from various TV networks. But again, most of what you get are clips, not full length episodes.

Internet TV launches tomorrow as a public beta, so there's a chance that Microsoft will sign up new partners before the official launch. But when your public beta is not just available to all users, but actually pushed out to their machines, the line between beta and full release is kind of blurry.

Ever want to take the AppleTV interface for a spin without spending $299 to actually buy a little white box? Flash developer Paul Yanez has come up with the next best thing to actually giving Apple your money. Not AppleTV mimics the AppleTV interface, but instead of iTunes videos, you can browse a selection of videos from online video sites like YouTube, Break, and the NSFW Pornotube.

Yanez is the same guy who developed the Flash-based Joost clone we told you about last month. He also has a Babelgum version.

We can't imagine that Joost, Babelgum, or Apple aren't going to come after this guy at some point and force him to shut down the sites. While he's not taking any video content from their respective services, his designs probably violate their intellectual property.

That said, it would be great if one of these companies would hire Yanez to develop a web interface for their products. It'd be great if you could install Joost on your home computer but access your account over the web using any browser. It would be even more exciting if you could access content stored on your AppleTV over the web using an interface like Not AppleTV.

[via TechCrunch]

Well, here's a rarity: a TV producer who wants you to watch a show illegally!

At least she's the only one who is admitting in public, that is. Weeds creator Jenji Kohan actually loves the fact that episodes of the new season are available online. In fact, she wishes that the entire season was online already:

"Revenue aside, I don't expect to get rich on 'Weeds.' I'm excited it's out there. Showtime is great, but it's a limited audience...if I had my druthers, the whole thing would be available right now."

Kind of the whole idea behind internet television platform Joost is that there's a better way to watch internet video than using a web browser. But developer Paul Yanez tells NewTeeVee he was frustrated that every time Joost issued a new beta release he had to download a new application. So he decided to build a Flash-based Joost clone that would run inside of a web browser. He can push out any updates he likes and you'll never have to download a thing.

Of course, he doesn't have permission from Joost to use their graphics. Nor does he have access to the same content Joost uses. But he's done a pretty good job of replicating the Joost interface using web video from sites like YouTube, MySpace, and iFilm.

The interface isn't perfect. For example you can't use your keyboard to navigate the menus, you'll need a mouse. Given that an independent developer was able to put this together in less than a month, it'd be nice to see Joost come out with something similar. Because while the idea of a standalone full screen video player is nice, the truth is people do spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer with a web browser open. It'd be nice to give them a better way to slack off at the office.

Right now, Internet TV platforms like Joost are basically the ghost of television shows past. Want to watch old episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle or Babylon 5? No problem. But fresher content is a bit harder to come by.

That's why it's rather impressive to see that Joost has landed a deal with VH1 to premiere the entire season of the new sitcom I Hate My 30s starting July 16th. That's ten days before the show will air on VH1.

The series' eight half-hour episodes follow a group of adults who are turning 30 and dealing with all those things you deal with when you realize your life is about a third of the way over. But you probably guessed that from the title.

It's not even clear yet that there's a market for full-screen applications for watching internet video without a web browser. But companies are coming out of the woodwork to take on internet TV platform Joost. I guess nobody wants to see Joost become the next YouTube when they could have had a chance to get in on the craze at its outset.

Blinkx is the latest online video site to announce a full-screen video player, no web browser required. BetaNews gota sneak peak at Blinkx's upcoming BBTV the other night.

Blinkx is best known right now for its video search engine. BBTV will utilize the same video indexing features as the web service, allowing you to search for specific text in a speech track. This will also help Blinkx to integrate a contextual advertisements.

BBTV will deliver video using a peer-to-peer system, much like Joost.

Now that I've had a chance to check out full-screen online video programs Joost, VeohTV, and Babelgum I'd been thinking about writing up a comparison. Mashable beat me to it, and threw in Democracy to boot.

All four programs aim to make the experience of watching online video easier. Web browsers were really designed for viewing text and images, not video. A side benefit is that most of these programs are also welcome additions to an HTPC.

In a nutshell, here's what Mashable found:

What Joost is doing for television over the internet, Veoh wants to do for internet video... over the internet. Let me rephrase that. You know how Joost takes internet video out of the web browser and puts it into a standalone full-screen application with easy to navigate controls? Yeah, that's what Veoh wants to do.

But while Joost's strategy has been to partner with companies like Paramount, CBS, and Viacom to provide content, VeohTV, which launches in beta this week, lets you see pretty much any video on the web in a standalone full screen application.

At this point, television networks have made some prime time content available for free online. We're not talking about $1.99 downloads from iTunes. We're talking free streaming episodes from networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW.

But you can usually find just few episodes of a few programs. Mashable has put together a list of 33 services that provide online access to TV programs in one way or another. Some are 100% legal, like Joost and Babelgum. Others are a bit shadiers, like TV Links, which doesn't host any copyright-infringing video on its servers, but provides links to sites where you can (probably illegally) stream video.

Internet video is all fine and good, but let's face it. Right now, most people want to watch TV on the TV.

And as we've described before, getting Joost to work with your TV set isn't exactly easy. First youneed tomake sure you've got a video card with TV-out, a computer that you're willing to plug into your TV (not a problem for many PC-based PVR users), and the time and energy to figure out how to program your remote control to flip through Joost channels without a keyboard and mouse.

So it's good to hear that Joost is in talks with hardware makers to embed Joost in devices like cable boxes and HD-DVD and Blu-ray players. No more fighting to connect your PC to your TV. Turn on your cable box, and Joost is right there. But at that point, isn't Joost just a new interface for video on demand, with less programming than you'd get from Comcast?

Now that Joost is actually signing deals to get content you might actually want to watch from CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and other networks, you might be wondering how to watch the computer-based internet television platform on your television set.

While Joost really does make watching online videos a bit more like watching TV and a bit less like surfing the web, you still pretty much need to use a keyboard to navigate. And that means even if you run a line from the video-out port on your computer or graphics card to your TV, it's no easy feat to watch Joost on the big screen.

Luckily, you can map the keyboard shortcuts to most PC remote controls. And you can even add an icon to your Windows Media Center Program Library that will start and stop Joost. Here are a few tips:

It's the age old story, company launches nifty new product, everything works great. Company upgrades said project, it breaks.

A few days ago Joost moved from a closed private beta to an almost-public beta by giving every current and new user 999 invitations to give away. Apparently the servers couldn't handle that much traffic and Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl writes on the Joost blog that the company is working on a fix.

For a company that's signing advertising and content deals left and right in the hopes of being the next big thing on the Internet, this is a rather unfortunate setback. But it's better to have these kind of errors during beta testing than after the product is officially launched.

A new study shows that 45% of European broadband customers use their high speed internet connections to watch television programs.

The BBC is taking advantage of this customer demand, forging ahead with plans to offer every program aired by the British network online with a new iPlayer service. At the same time, Internet TV platform Joost is moving closer to an official launch.

The survey of 2500 broadband customers was conducted by Motorola and shows that 35% of respondents want the ability to pause, rewind, or fast forward live television broadcasts.