09:46 by FoxTwo I remember some years ago, I was watching an episode of Seaquest DSV, the resident teenaged genius was accessing the "Internet", but it wasn't the Internet as we know it. That "Internet" was cool... loaded with graphics and audio, and interactivity.
Years later, finally we are getting somewhere close to that "vision". Recently I got invited to a new way to watch TV on the Internet - Joost. Even though Joost might still be in beta, what it has already got is getting there - we're on the way to an interactive, multimedia Internet as envisioned in the show Seaquest.
Well as you can imagine, I spent the past few days just channel-surfing on Joost. They have short clips, long 90 min movies, and everything else in between. I spent alot of time on their Sci-Fi channel, watching a series called "Total Recall 2070", which wasn't available here in Singapore. I saw Lexx and Starhunter on the Sci-Fi channel there too! Now if only they could get the old Buck Rogers TV series... :)
In fact when I first started on Joost, I was actually amazed. I thought the videos were going to be "blocky", small, and low-resolution, with constant "buffering" problems like those on Youtube and other video sites. I was however pleasantly surprised that Joost works FULL SCREEN and also in near-DVD quality, with only very few minor "buffering" problems. You could literally watch a couple of hours of videos on Joost and only encounter 2 or 3 such "buffering" problems.
Having widgets is cool too, although I'd like to be able to make my own widgets. Using the defaults are fine, but I do want to customise their "clock" widget to show Swatch Beats as well as 24 hour time, but I can't yet, cos they haven't released the SDK for making your own Widgets.
On another front - I stumbled across last.fm, a "social radio" thing. I think it's pretty cool, cos I could listen to some music, and the thing would "recommend" me similar songs. I found a lot of old songs I forgot about, and listened to them there. I also finally found titles to some songs I never even knew the title to, but have heard before!
It's cool too, that it has a downloadable bit of software to accompany your Winamp or Windows Media Player (or whatever you use to play your music) which "learns" your tastes, and it helps to further refine your "profile" and recommends music that are more and more to your tastes.
Labels: Joost, last.fm, multimedia, online radio, online tv
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xanitu @ Tuesday, December 25, 2007 4:28:00 AM Hi! I recommend you this other site: http://www.tutelevisiononline.com for me its much better. Byeee!!
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FoxTwo @ Tuesday, December 25, 2007 5:52:00 AM xanitu - thanks for the link, but the point of the post isn't about "watching TV from other countries". The point is that it's a NEW WAY to watch TV with interactive features built into the programmes.
With Joost you can IM your friends while watching TV, take screenshots, blog about it etc, all right from the client.
