Boxee, one of the more promising media applications out there today, is announcing the launch of a few new content sources today at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Boxee now has added support for content from Joost and MTV Music. Joost is bringing its usual assortment of video content to the table, while MTV provides a huge amount of music videos. In the United Kingdom, Boxee has also added the BBC's popular iPlayer to its arsenal of content.
In addition, Boxee will be totally opening up its Mac, Linux, and Apple TV alphas to anyone who wants to sign up. The Windows version, however, will not be entering an open alpha, but rather an invite-only alpha while it scales.
Boxee, for those of you who don't know, is a media application that can act as a player for content on your computer or, where it really shines, as a conduit for viewing Web video from a variety of sources. Video sites that currently have a plug-in on Boxee include Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, CNN, Apple Movie Trailers, Revision3, CBS, Comedy Central, and more.
Boxee really does a great job of handling all of these different sources of content and presenting them in an easy-to-navigate way. In addition to these video sources, Boxee also integrates music sites such as CBS' Last.fm and Shoutcast. (Editors' note: CBS publishes CNET News.)
As you can see, there's a lot to be excited about here.
After its excellent implementation of Netflix instant streaming, people have been begging Microsoft to bring Hulu and other video sites to the Xbox. Boxee is beating Microsoft to the punch, even offering a Netflix implementation that is more full-featured than the Xbox's.
If Boxee can find a way to get its software off of computer monitors and on to more TVs (as it is doing with Apple TV), I think we could be looking at the next big contender in media software.
Men in Black playing on Joost's new iPhone app.
If ever there was a Web service that experienced a rapid fall from grace, it was online video start-up Joost. What started out as a much anticipated new service ultimately fell short of expectations and has recently struggled for attention. Friday, Joost released an iPhone app for its service that might be a game changer. Joost's iPhone app lets users stream and watch any of Joost's 46,000-plus videos for free.
Say what you will about Joost's library of content, the concept behind this app is fantastic. The ability to stream a movie, TV show, or other piece of video content on the go is great. I know the technology is nothing revolutionary--after all the iPhone has had a YouTube app, complete with streaming video, since the device launched. Even given that, when you load up Men in Black on Joost, it just feels like a whole different ballgame. This isn't a video of a dog on a skateboard anymore. This is real, Hollywood-produced content, delivered to your phone, for free.
I have not experienced the major hiccups that very early users, like MG Siegler did, so those issues seem to have been taken care of. I did notice some occassional stuttering of the stream over Wi-Fi. I am, however, disheartened by the lack of streaming support over EDGE or 3G. Joost requires a Wi-Fi connection to work.
Even though Joost appears to have a really slick UI (in many ways it does), it breaks some of the conventions for UI design set forth by Apple. Flicking to view the next page of search results does work. However, it does not slide over as you would expect, rather a spinning wheel is displayed while the next page loads. Joost also did not implement the incremental find that we have all grown accustomed to for searching.
For me, Joost's iPhone app falls just short of greatness. I really like what they are going for here, but I would certainly like to see more content added to Joost's library and support for 3G at the very least, if not EDGE. Even though the videos appear to choke at times, even over Wi-Fi, 3G should be more than capable of streaming video.
I hope that Hulu and Netflix, with their expansive content libraries, are paying attention to what Joost is doing because they are both prime candidates for this sort of mobile application. I get excited just thinking about having access to all of those videos (almost) anytime I want.
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