So how is Joost different to other internet TV systems? As you may have worked out from the 2 founder previous form it relies on Peer to peer (P2P) technology whereby each Joost user installs a client which not only receives data but also send it to other Joost users. With a traditional Peer 2 Peer system the first user to download a file may collect it from the main server, then the next user will collect packets of data from both the main server and also the users machine that downloaded the file first. This daisy chain grows and forms a network or web of clients and the more popular a file is the more clients there are to distribute it to new users.

That is all well and good with a data file which can be broken up and put together over time (downloaded) until the file is complete and then made available to the user. But Joost is not a traditional download platform instead it is similar to a Webstreaming system in that video is streamed and cached before playback begins but not fully downloaded and splitting these data sources between P2P clients is not a simple affair.

Joost is still in Beta and now more widely available and we have been part of the beta test programme for the last few months, so time to share our thoughts on the television revolution. The Joost application is a simple download (9.7mb) and install which take a few minutes to get up and running, you'll need a good quality broadband connection and a 512k just won't do the job you'll need at least 1mb and we tested with 2mb which is not the standard offering from many providers including BT.

When Joost starts it appears to take over your machine in that it runs up in a full size window and hides your desktop and all other running applications, in fact through our review we found it best to close any other office or media applications to give Joost the maximum CPU time. We found that Joost would regularly eats 40% of the CPU and we have seen peaks of around 60% plus it has a fairly meaty memory footprint when playing. The fact it opens full screen and in black did startled us a bit but soon you get to see a very slick GUI which is more media player than P2P application and convinces you almost instantly that your PC is now a TV.

The interface is so simple that we were navigating round like pros within minutes and surfing a channel just 35 seconds after the application started for the first time. It is a bit tricky to work out how reliable the video is going to be as the video on Joost is all encoded at differing bit rates, they claim that it is near TV quality. Well as some of our team work in the broadcast industry we have to spill the beans and tell you it is far from "TV quality" what it is, is a very good compromise between the likes of YouTube and streaming video and an average SKY TV (non HD) channel. Joost uses AVC H.264 codecs where as Sky still relies on MPEG-2 this means Joost get more bang for their buck but still a 1mbps encoded stream isn't going to beat a 4 - 5 mbits encoded MEPG-2 service.

Joost is built on Mozilla’s XULRunner engine which means that it should work cross platform over time, for now you'll struggle to get it running on  Linux but for the majority of Windows users it will work without issue despite still being a beta version.

Joost is all about content and as they say content is king, so we were pleased to see a growing list of channels from mainstream names such as paramount, the ministry of sound and even fifth gear from channel 5. As already mentioned the quality is not stunning and when blown up to full screen the compression artefacts are there front and centre but you soon forget them when you start watching TV from half way round the world.

Our tests over the course of a month proved that all is not perfect just yet as we encountered a fair few stutters and stalls in video delivery which seemed to be worse when less users were online which figures when you consider how a P2P network runs.

Joost may or may not be the future of television but it certainly widens choice and delivers entertainment on demand and it clearly has the major broadcasters more than worried by the pedigree of its development team. The latest version 0.10.2 is now available for beta testers to share with friends and as you dear reader are one of our friends we'll happily send you an invite if you contact us via our form.

Published - 12/05/2007

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