Why Joost when you've got Democracy?

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 10:34

Your IT - Home IT

Furthermore, many such plans allow for some kind of off-peak traffic, typically starting around midnight or 2am and extending to the start of business hours or even noon. In this situation, a podcasting-style model (as used by Democracy) is far more appropriate, allowing you to subscribe to a channel and have the content downloaded ahead of time.

Indeed, TiVo, PVRs, vodcasting and even the humble VHS recorder have all fed the trend of collecting content and then watching it at leisure. Unfortunately for Joost, most people's leisure time coincides with ISP's definition of peak hours.

For now, I'll be giving Joost a miss. But as bandwidth gets cheaper, it will eventually come down to content: if Joost is ever able to outbid conventional broadcasters for the rights to major sporting events such as the Olympics, the (soccer) World Cup and major domestic competitions, we'll know it has won.

Do you think I'm wrong or missing the point? Leave a comment to set me straight.