Teething problems for Joost

The internet TV provider Joost is experiencing teething problems following the official launch of the P2P television service earlier this month. With 500,000 registered users, of which only 40,000 regularly access the service, viewers are experiencing hiccups in the delivery of the video signal. Viewers are also complaining about the lack of available programming and an user-unfriendly interface.

At the moment Joost is beefing up its programming offer with new content deals announced almost every week. Most content owners prefer to sell their programmes on a country-by-country basis and Joost obviously wants to offer worldwide access to its service. It remains to be seen if the internet TV company will be able to secure enough attractive content to keep its viewers happy.

A new investment round which brought in €45 million should help resolve any technical problems. By using P2P distribution Joost should in theory be able to serve all viewers with a reliable signal quality.

Another problem seems to be the user interface, which makes it difficult to find programming. There is as yet no EPG or anything like it to guide viewers to the content they might want to see. Programmes are now just grouped by channel. This is no problem as long as the amount of programmes is limited, but with an ever increasing offer this could prove to be a stumbling block.