Following on from the sale of Skype, creators Zennstrom and Friis
began a new venture codenamed “The Venice Project”.
Recently “The Venice Project” was announced re-branded as “Joost”.

The aim of Joost is to provide medium/high quality full-screen streaming
video but with the choice and ease of switching we are used to on our regular TVs.

I posted a plea on Irish Webmaster Forums for a Joost “Beta-Invite” (Joost is in closed Beta).
Kindly Paul sent me one without haste and I rushed

off to have a go.

The review (as of Joost Beta 0.9.2):

Video Streaming
I was pleasantly surpised by the video streaming ability.
While I don’t think it is full-screen quality (On my 27-inch it is pixelated unless watched from TV-distance) it is

an amazing step over the Youtube video size and yet it streams almost flawlessly. While I had a few intermittent

video pauses I believe it was because of my broadband latency at the moment.

Channel Switching
Would you wait 30 seconds to switch channel on your TV? No, I don’t think you would (unless you’re on Chorus).
This is the beauty of Joost. When you switch channel it typically takes between 5 and 15 seconds for the video to

start streaming (full screen mind) so it seems negligible-latency video could be around the corner.

Interface
I understand where the designers were coming from with the interface design. They wanted to show that the interface

is not between you and the video but rather the interface should only be there to change the video you are currently

watching. This makes sense doesn’t it? You don’t leave teletext or the menu up on your TV while you are watching.

However I find the current grey color scheme unappealing and rather dull.

Content Selection
Here’s where the service will succeed or fail - range of content. As of the beta Joost has managed to sign up some

slightly obscure channels and some bigger ones (MTV/WPT) but the major ones people want aren’t catered for.

Conclusion

If Joost keeps gaining momentum, securing providers and improving technology then the Joost investors have nothing to worry about. As for us users - I’m hoping they get some really good content and they keep advertisement lengths down (now up to 4 minutes on regular TV).