Joost seriously must be close to the next big thing. I can simply run an S-Video cable out from my laptop to the tv, switch my resolution size and joost! I have a large assortment of programs to choose from to watch at my leisure. The video and sound quality is good and the user interface sort of makes you feel like you’re in the future. When I first started watching some of their shows I was pretty amazed at how easy the whole setup process was and pleased that in less than 5 minutes of downloading and setup, I was watching what looked like a pretty decent show from the National Geographic Channel. The first show I watched was actually not that great but I did notice how Joost was handling their advertising. A little reminder window popped up in the bottom right hand corner of the screen for United Airways. I felt that this method of advertising was perfect because the advertising remains effective and it doesn’t interrupt the program. I can absorb the program info and advertisement at the same time. This worked nicely. But then I switched to a documentary about West Point and was bombarded by full-fledged and repetitive Nike commercials. This was annoying because I was shown the same exact commercial twice with about 4 minutes of show in between. So I switched to another documentary called Picante about chili peppers. Seemed like a cool little documentary and it was, until I kept getting the same Nike ad over and over again. That did it for me and I shut it off.

Right now the only benefit of Joost is the ability to watch what you want when you want. The shows are ok but they seem more like pilot episodes that didn’t quite make it to mainstream cable. If advertising can remain in the reminder pop-up window format then they would have a winning delivery method. The normal commercials are…well…normal. No one really wants standard tv on their laptop. People want to watch their programs when they want them without the commercials. The compromise for Joost would be to kill the standard commercials and keep the small advertising pop-up window. If they’re simply replicating status quo television then why is this service useful? They’re in beta after all so I’ll give them another go in a month or so.

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