While we wait for NBC to develop a mobile version of their video service Hulu, and pray for an alternative to iPhone’s built in YouTube app, Joost’s native client has arrived on iPhone. With a selection of over 46.000 videos, it’s a pretty good alternative – It’s not a YouTube, it’s about 8.000.000 videos short of that title, but it is respectable. For those of you who are yet to experience Joost, think NBC’s Hulu service, only on a smaller scale. Music Videos, TV Shows, Movies and more …
First up – Joost for iPhone [App Store] is completely FREE, but that was to be expected as users were probably not going to plunk down for something they already have access to out of box (YouTube).
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to drop the bomb-shell. Joost only supports viewing videos over Wi-Fi. Opening the app while connected over an Edge or 3G connection results in the following message being displayed:
“I’m Sorry but Joost only works with a Wi-Fi connection. You cannot play videos over the 3G or EDGE networks.”
The app features five tabs across the bottom including;
- Joost Picks
The best picks of the Joost video library, as chosen by Joost
- Popular
The most popular videos today, of the Joost video library, as chosen by it’s users
- Browse
Here you can choose to browse Joost by three main categories; Film, Music and Tv Shows
- Search
Search the entire Joost video library by keyword
The Playing Screen
Watching video’s with Joost is pretty similar to the built in YouTube app. Graphically it looks very Web 2.0’ish, clean and the playing screen is easily navigable.
As with YouTube.app, you also have the ability to watch your videos in aspect ratio or zoom views – which as we already know is a pretty nice feature. Progress of the video’s playback is shown on the top bar, while also showing a movable scrubber bar. Changing the video’s view is as easy as tapping the diagonal ‘stretch’ symbol in the bottom right, and exiting a video just requires tapping the cross symbol.
Overall
Now currently, the app is extremely buggy, with some users reporting the the app won’t even let them play a video, despite being connected over a Wi-Fi connection. I’ve found the application does tend to crash frequently, and is slow to respond to taps and gestures. Still, Joost for iPhone is completely free, and therefore it can be given the benefit of the doubt, ish. I just hope Joost raise the restriction on playback over Wifi, extending it to EDGE and 3G, and issue an update shortly which has some fixes for stability.
It’s worth a try being a free app, but along with everyone else if this ever went up in price, I don’t think I’d pay for it. I have to give it to Joost though, despite it’s buggy behavior, they are one of the first (known) third-party video services to get an app out there.
Reviewed at: v1.0.3
Download size: 0.5MB
Released on: 17th Nov 2008
Retails for: FREE
Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G
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