James Galvin

I spent some time today setting up a new TV the old fashioned way, scanning through the frequencies with the remote control. I confess that I was gripped by an eager anticipation as RTE 1 materialised on the screen - a residue of the excitment from the old days when one guy would be up on the roof adjusting the aerial, while the fella in the living room shouted up the chimney whenever the blob of dots on the screen began to resemble Gay Byrne. Somehow its still a surprise when TV3 and TG4 pop up on the box.

If you had asked me in 2001, I would not have predicted that six years later we would still be fiddling with bunny ears and coat hangers in Ireland, trying to tune in Network 2 without losing RTE 1. In the rising tide of media centre PCs and wifi enabled gaming consoles, surely this next six years will see major changes in the way we watch the television. TV over the internet has been a long time coming, but at last, it is safe to say that we’re nearly there.

The first step is modernising is increasing the definition, and just about everyone I know bought a HD-ready LCD TV this year, but none of them have actually gone so far as to watch anything in high def. Extra hardware requirements and monthly subscription costs for a couple of HD channels on Sky renders that service impractical. And with BlueRay still volatile in its infancy, I expect that only those of us rich enough to own a Playstation 3 will be experiencing that in the short term. This is why I see Zudeo Vuse, from Azureus, as being a great service. “A radically new way to discover and watch popular TV shows and hard-to-find videos - Hi-def and full screen” is exactly what the doctor ordered, and with BBC having pledged tons of content, this is a resource that is destined for very big things.

There has been plenty of news lately about Babelgum - a next generation TV provider with a Long Tail philosophy who recently set up shop in Dublin. Babelgum sounds promising, but it has been overshadowed a bit by Joost who are that bit closer to launch. I was pleased to receive my Joost invitation today, apparently they have been very busy fine-tuning it for me. They’ve even given me this here image which makes me so proud:

There’s no Linux version just yet, but they have released a client to run on my new Macbook Pro. I had a very quick tour of the software earlier, and it is impressive to say the least. The problem with beta software is that it doesn’t always work, and this is exactly what is stopping me from examining the service further. The Joost support forums are hopping at the moment with people unable to connect, and unfortunately one of them is me. First impressions - it looks great, but in a country where our ISPs think 128k upload is standard for broadband, do we have the bandwidth for it? I’ll come back to that…

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 2:43 am and is filed under Internet, Joost, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.