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Would Joost still matter if it were on your cable box?

by Brad Linder Jun 16th 2007

JoostRight now, most people want to watch TV on the TV. And as we've described before, getting Joost to work with your TV set involves several (kind of) complicated steps, like making sure you have a video card with TV-out, a computer close to your television, and the time and energy to figure out how to program a computer remote control to flip channels on Joost without a keyboard and mouse.

So it's good to hear that Joost is in talks with hardware makers to embed Joost in devices like cable boxes and HD-DVD and Blu-ray players. No more fighting to connect your PC to your TV. Turn on your cable box, and Joost is right there.

But at that point, isn't Joost just a new interface for video on demand, with less programming than you'd get from Comcast? Part of the whole selling point of Joost was that it made the experience of watching internet video a bit more like watching TV. If you're actually, you know, watching TV on it, does Joost actually bring anything to the table?

Sure, you'll be getting your video from the internet instead of directly from your cable provider, but to date, that's actually meant lower quality and occasional buffering issues. And while there might be a wider selection of obscure content from independent producers, we're not sure that's actually a selling point.

What do you think would you be more or less likely to use Joost if it came with your cable box?

Tags: embedded, internet tv, InternetTv, iptv, joost

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