Joost, il progetto di televisione online, nato dalle menti dei creatori di Skype è giunto alla versione 0.9.

Molte le novità del nuovo Joost:

• una nuova procedura di registrazione che richiede di scegliere un nome utente;
• il sistema di inviti è stato incorporato nell’applicazione e non più sul sito;
• una nuova funzionalità StandBy per mettere in pausa i programmi;
• un sistema ricezione più “tollerante” in presenza di connessioni ad Internet non particolarmente performanti;
• un maggior numero di canali presenti ed altro ancora che potete leggere nelle note di rilascio che potete trovare in fondo all’articolo.

Ecco alcune schermate del programma:

Intervista a Nelly Furtado sul canale Ministry Of Sound TV

Intervista a Jessica Simpson su Joost

La guida TV dei canali disponibili su Joost

Per chi li desidera, sono disponibili alcuni inviti per provare il Joost. Come al solito, basta lasciare un commento.

AGGIORNAMENTO 11 aprile 2007: oggi è stata rilasciata la versione 0.9.2 di Joost.

Questa invece è una copia delle note di rilascio:

Release Notes

We have endeavoured to provide as solid a release as possible for 0.9.0 but as can be expected there are still some rough edges and this file gives you those issues that we know about and any work arounds that there are.

User Registration and Login

With 0.9 we are introducing a new Registration and Login process when you first run Joost after installing it. Whereas before you entered the invitation email address in the Installer and then the password in the program we have now put both the Registration of Joost Names, and the initial Login into Joost itself.

Now when you first start the Joost you have a Login screen, if you have been a participant on the Release Candidate Beta tests of the 0.9.0 release then you may already have a Joost Name. If that is the case then enter it and the password you chose and then Joost will start.

If you haven’t registered your Joost Name yet then click the button with the legend “Get your Joost Name here”. This will take you to the registration screen where you enter the email address you were originally invited on, a name of your choice (should it be available) and the password. Once the name has been accepted you will be logged in automatically.

If you install Joost on any other machine just login with that Joost Name and the password and the program will carry on. Once you have logged on or registered on a particular machine (for a particular Operating System account), you won’t see the Login/Registration form again.
The New Invitation System

Along with the new User and Registration system we have moved the Invitation system into the program as well. Now you can invite people from the Joost program itself and let others know that you’re a Joost user, what you are watching and invite them. The Invitation Widget also lets you see the status of your existing invitations and how many you have left to give out.

The Invitation Widget is in the My Joost area and will appear the first time you enter My Joost.

Standby

The ‘Standby’ button minimises to system taskbar. When you click the power button this now pauses the video and suspends the application and sends it to the system taskbar. On the system taskbar, double clicking or selecting restore on the menu will present the application in its previous state and resume playing the current Show.

To exit the application choose the exit option on the system taskbar.

When you go to Standby a balloon message will appear at the bottom of the screen to let you know what has happened.

Quality of Reception

The application is now even more tolerant of poor network performance and will attempt to retry and restart streams that have become stalled. In severe conditions you may find that this produces freezes of the video followed by it continuing. If the video cannot be delivered at all then Joost will play the next show in the channel or you can choose a different show in the same or another channel.
The Organization of the User Interface

The Interface is divided into a number of screens, two of the main screens My Channels and My Joost are on the left and right edge of the screen or window. The other screens can be entered either from My Channels or My Joost.

Each Screen can be closed or left by clicking the ‘Setting Sun’ symbol in the top right of each Screen. This will always take you to the Main Screen, My Channels or My Joost depending upon where you entered that Screen.

The EPG (Electronic Program Guide) and the mini EPG can be navigated using the cursor keys. Individual Channels can be selected immediately by entering their number, the number of each Channel is now beside the Channel name in the EPG.

The duration of each Show is now on the Information page whilst that Show is running rather than on the mini EPG. The duration of shows listed on the EPG is now written out in words, (1 hour, 30 minutes), rather than numbers.

Windowed Mode

The application opens in full screen mode, but can be made to run in a minimal window that can be resized. At sizes below 800×600 the display of the text will be difficult to read and at the moment the My Joost Widgets do not scale their text according to the window size. For this reason if you try and enter My Joost when windowed it gives you a dialogue and the opportunity to go full screen. This can also be switched off on the Preference Widget.

You can drag the window around your desktop by clicking in the video background and moving the mouse.

You can drag the window to any active monitor, have it overlap across monitors and when made full screen again it will use the screen with the majority in use.
Overlays

Some Shows have their own extra content, and that is signified by the full color icon of the Content Owner at the top of the screen. Clicking that icon will bring that Content Owner’s own extra content to the screen.

Advertisements now have their own overlays, whether they are the short ‘blipvert’ at the beginning of the show, or whether they are the 30 second adverts shown in the middle of the show. These overlays are a little like small web pages.

When you enter the extra content, or interactive features for the content you can toggle between the Show’s own content or the Advertiser’s associated with that Show.

Overlays, if they are written to support it, can be moved around the screen, usually by clicking in the Overlay area and dragging the mouse.

Channels on Joost

Each installation of Joost gets its own starting line up of shows in the EPG depending upon the location of the machine when installed. If you travel outside the country you last used Joost in then you will probably find that some shows are no longer available (you will see Error #95). This is normal and just means that the show is not released for that country.

The What’s New Channel has been replaced by the Joost Suggests Channel.

Channel Catalog

The Channel Catalog has been considerably improved for this version (though we haven’t stopped thinking of ways of improving it further). Some of the improvements include.

* Being able to click on featured channels on the main Channel Catalog page and add them directly.
* More categories of Channels.
* Alphabetical list of channels.
* Many cosmetic improvements.

Age warnings

If a show is rated at being for those over 16 a warning overlay will be presented before the show starts.
Rewind and forward (Seeking)

You can rewind the current show back from your current position to any point before it and any position ahead of where you’re currently viewing. If you have already viewed that part of the show then it will seek very quickly. If you haven’t yet viewed that part of the show then Joost will fetch it directly, however, it will take some seconds for the stream to be fetched and then resynchronised.

This is the first implementation of Remote seeking (as we call this) and as further enhancements are implemented this behaviour will improve but we do think this is an important feature and one we think is very useful as it is now.

One side effect of this is that now when you restart Joost it will begin playing from when it was last used, continuing that show where it left off and not starting it from the beginning again.

To seek within a Show

If you hover over the progress bar on the Controller a handle will appear at the current position, click and drag that handle to move forward or backwards. The screen will update with frames from the video so that you can visually seek the right place within the show.
Search

Search depends upon being able to contact our back end servers in order to fulfill the query, if Joost isn’t able to connect with the server then it will put up a message and you’ll have to go back to the main screen.

This isn’t something that should happen in the ordinary course of events so if it does we would be glad to hear of it.

RSS feeds

The RSS News ticker displays, on a continuous basis, an RSS feed of your choice. Actually you can have more than one at a time. We haven’t added any example feeds so that we avoid infringing any Terms of Service of third party sites.

To add a site enter the URL of an RSS feed, such as the BBC, CNN or, for example, The Venice Project Blog (http://www.theveniceproject.com/blog.rss) into the News Ticker Manager and then Display it. The pin symbol on the top of the RSS Feed window (and all other plugins in My Joost) means that you can see it on the main screen of the application.

The RSS feed plugin has been redeveloped and will now parse any of the available formats.

The problem with the Channel chat losing the input focus has now been fixed.

Scritto da Tiziano Fogliata, mercoledì 4 aprile 2007 alle 0:15
Parole chiave: Joost, televisione, TV
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