Sunday, May 06, 2007

The Mad Pulp Bastard says that the Kung Fu Monkey commanded offhandedly suggested he sign up for Joost. This appears to be the latest in a very long line of Video On Demand (VOD) technologies. I remember talking to a programmer friend of mine who working on this back in the late 90's, and thinking, yeah, I've heard that before.

(I also remember talking to someone who was trying to invent a way to edit video on a personal computer. This was 1986 and a personal computer barely had enough RAM to render a single frame of NTSC. So you would have had to do it all with tape drives, and 60 seconds would have taken all night. Oh, and NTSC isn't digital, so you'd have generation loss. Sometimes the hardware just has to catch up.)

The idea is you can watch your TV shows on your computer when you want them, instead of when they happen to be on. Sort of like TiVo but without having to remember to record the thing; also, it seems to have ads, though I'm unclear on whether they make you watch them.

Oh, and, it's free. But you have to get an "invitation" from someone who already has it.

I wonder if this will catch on? More to the point, I wonder if the broadcast networks will dare put their content on Joost?

Labels: TV distribution tech

10:05 AM

2 Comments:

Alliance Atlantis has a stream on Joost for TOTAL RECALL 2070 (available only outside the US and Canada). MTV has a stream of shows as well. It won't be long before new, original content makes it way into the stream.

By  Cunningham, at 6:28 AM  

I think Viacom is on board with Joost. They made an announcement the week after pulling all their YouTube content.

By  Matthew Forsythe, at 9:28 PM  

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