Actually I’m not a regular Skype user, although I have used Skype and a number of other Voice 2.0 applications successfully in the past.

My gripe was not with the beta element of the Joost experience (incidentally the program is no longer in beta, although I’ve not had a chance to review it, as the latest release broke compatibility with my machine); but rather with the philosophy behind it - It’s old media through and through, redistributed using new technology; And with the hype surrounding it. Wired news for example devoted a considerable number of articles to extolling Joost (then The Venice Project), as the future of television.

As a digicaster, and a longtime consumer of TV in unofficial digital form (alluc.org, torrents etc), I’m very interested in how television is adapting to the ‘new media landscape’ (sic). Joost, while for now technically ahead of the competition, in terms of image fidelity and buffering technology, seems to offer little new for content creators. It’s authors have (apparently) chosen to reject user created content, ostensibly for reasons of economies of scale, arguably to keep their big media suppliers sweet - although I’d love to be proved wrong about this.

In any case, my article was not about my preference or dislike of Joost per say; but rather an effort to stand back from the hype and predict it’s success in the market. As such, time will tell!

As for major name content, they have content from Viacom (MTV) ,Endamol (People ’s Champions) ,National Geographic and they are still testing the platform and injesting content .

I don’t expect to see any big names on the platform till they launch officaly .