Joost’s Video Website: There Are Better Options
Joost had a video application that you’d download to your computer and it would essentially turn your computer into a TV. It was kind of annoying to have to use a client, and especially one that was buggy and seemed to either be constantly locking up or requiring an upgrade, but I did find some appeal in the immersive way it mimicked standard TV conventions like channels, making for an immediately familiar experience.
Well, Joost scrapped that whole client concept and decided to provide video streaming on their website instead. This new approach debuted a few weeks ago, so I pushed myself to check it out.
The Good
- The website largely works as advertised, with the same depth of content and functionality — you find video content and play it all in the web browser. It’s an improvement over the downloadble application in many ways.
The Bad
- The content selection is still sub par.
- Site navigation isn’t as simple and friendly as other video websites.
Conclusion
The new Joost site is commendable from a technical point of view — the videos work, they play, and it’s much improved over the download client in that regard.
But by moving to a website only model, Joost immediately put themselves in competition with other sites with better content and presentation (Hulu, Netflix Watch Now), or paid options like Amazon and the iTunes Store. The odds that I’ll visit Joost regularly are extremely low, mostly due to the lack of compelling content.
Content is king and I just can’t see taking the time out of my day to watch old episodes of The Partridge Family especially when much more appealing entertainment awaits elsewhere.
I think it’s worth checking it out!
A more fundamental problem is the fact that the content continues to be kept behind a registration wall. I mean seriously, does Joost want to shoot themselves in the foot every step of the way? (first downloadable now walling the content).
I’ll probably check it out at some point, but I’m not in a rush. And everytime I go over there and see that damned registration page in order to watch a video, I bail.
Hulu team is looking like geniuses these days.
Alright I caved and tried it out (guess I had an old login — but it had to be validated). They have some decent movies. I’ll give them that.
But the site design sucks. Something about the order in which some of the frames and elements are loading that’s bugging me. I’ll load a page and some text will appear and then the top portion of the page will shift everything down as some player finally renders in the top (this is on Firefox). If it was a one or two time thing, I’d deal, but this is every page which leads me to believe there’s some problems.
Also — if you’re Joost, playing catch up, you’d think you’d push the distribution angle by adding embeds (hell you should add embedding even if you’re not playing catch up!).
Yeah.… the Joost site pales in comparison to Hulu even just from a design
perspective, that’s for sure. I also found it difficult to navigate through
the content.