TVSquad

Joost and YouTube are hardly the only games in town when it comes to online video. But TechCrunch's Eirck Schonfeld poses an interesting question: is Joost's time already up?

The online video platform has barely entered public beta, but Adobe is about to change the game somewhat by incorporating the h.264 codec in the next version of its Flash player software. That means all the videos you watch on YouTube, DailyMotion, Metacafe, or pretty much any other online video site will suddenly look an awful lot sharper without using up any more bandwidth.

Schonfeld argues that could spell the beginning of the end for Joost, which has yet to develop a YouTube-sized user base. If people can get high quality streaming video of full-length TV episodes from network sites, video sharing sites, and other websites, they will, he says.

But that kind of misses the point. Joost, VeohTV, and other standalone video platforms aim to take the entire online video experience out of the web browser. Why would you want to use the same program to read a newspaper as you do to watch a movie? Joost's success or failure will depend on its ability to create a compelling user experience. It takes a combination of of high quality video, uninterrupted streaming, and a novel but useful user interface to do that.

Joost has most of those things down pat. The thing they don't have right now is full-length episodes of most current prime time television programs. And until they hammer out details with the networks to provide those shows, I think Joost will always appeal to a niche audience at best.