| Joost on iPhone doesn’t work in Australia |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Tuesday, 02 December 2008 | |
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Joost is finally available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and only works when connected to Wi-Fi (and not 3G or EDGE), and while some initial reports suggested little worked before an update which saw video starting to flow, Joost appears not to work at all in Australia, at least at the current time. Every video I’ve tried to play over Joost tells me that “poor network performance” means the video can’t be played, and that I should “try again later”, which is terribly disappointing, as Joost on iPhone effectively gives you a new TV set with access to all kinds of TV shows, movies and music videos. Joost was the first legal video application for PCs that delivered a measure of “premium content” to viewers worldwide, and at the time, generated a lot of publicity and goodwill. Created by the makers of Skype and Kazaa, Joost used peer to peer technology to deliver video at approximately “standard definition” quality, although the application chewed through the bandwidth at around 300MB downloaded and 100MB uploaded per hour of viewing. This made Joost great for those in countries where ISPs had truly “unlimited” services, but far from ideal for those in countries like Australia where “unlimited” services get shaped after a set amount is used, and even worse when used with ISPs that counted uploads towards download usage. The thing is, despite having a measure of “premium content”, the sad reality was that much of the content really wasn’t “premium” enough. Music videos, Swimsuit TV, some sports programming and episodes of “Total Recall 2070”, amongst other content, really wasn’t that compelling. Instead, tens of millions flocked to YouTube, and when the Hulu.com website (only available to US viewers) started offering true primetime “premium content” of TV shows that were current and past movie hits, Joost became less compelling than ever. Back on the 14th of October, Joost announced that it was moving towards deliving video over a Flash browser plug-in, and adding “social networking tools”, and while it has dramatically increased the quality and quantity of its content, showing some well known movies and past TV show hits, much of this content is, as usual, restricted by geographical location. Now, Joost has gone mobile with the iPhone, as announced at the Joost blog, and even though it is just a tease in Australia, showing content that refuses to play, what Joost has to say about the service is definitely interesting. More details are on page 2, please read on! |
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