February 21, 2007
Viacom and Joost Exchange Video Valentines
An email in my inbox (as a Joost beta tester) announces a content deal with Viacom. Very cool. While Joost has two problems, bandwith hog and minimal content, as an IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) client, I'm very impressed with the video quality. And while content is still minimal, there still is enough there for many hours of viewing pleasure, including a great deal of variety.
Now while a lot of the Viacom content is from MTV past and present content, which I don't care much about, it might be kind of fun occasionally tuning in to watch old Beavis and Butthead episodes. Uh hunh hunh huh. But the rest of the Viacom content will likely appeal to a much younger crowd, not me.
Now I'm already a TV and IPTV junkie, but what I would shell out money to see is older stuff that is really hard to find - at least in Canada, and possibly in the US, maybe everywhere. For example, I'm a big fan of the American cartoon Freakazoid,and of a cancelled sci-fi-ish show called Early Edition. There are also 1950s short movies of Batman and Superman that I'd love to see and haven't found on DVD. (Granted, I didn't look very hard.)
Put all this sort of content (let me pick) online and allow payment via PayPal (Skype's sister company) and you've got me. Maybe make it a download of the month club sort of deal, for $9.95/mth, lots of content to choose from. And no ads.
Problem is, Joost streaming video content isn't stored on your computer (that I know of), so I'd have to download again and again. Hopefully they'll come up with a solution for that (straight burn to your computer's DVD drive?). But even if not, the Long Tail suggests that Joost (or someone else) could do very well by keeping the price low and offering lots of choice. And when Apple's iTV device comes out, I'm hoping I can stream Joost content straight to the 40" TV I'm hoping I'll buy myself for Xmas this year.
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