Internet TV: Joost vs Babelgum
Posted on May 12, 2007
Filed Under general |
Video online is hot (VideoJug just pulled in US$30M) and there are loads of streaming video sharing sites. But there are very few standalone applications that play video. One is Joost, the other is Babelgum.
If you know about Joost then you know that bandwidth issues aside, it just may be the future of television on the web. Joost just went into public beta this week, but you can get accepted faster if you have an invite from an existing beta tester. (See bottom of this post.)
Babelgum, on the other hand, is another story. I’ve yet to get an invite, though I applied months ago. However, it’ll be in public beta this month as well. It’s touted to be a director competitor to Joost. While Joost has been scoring content deals with several large film and video houses (not to mention US$45M in venture capital), Babelgum has an exclusive deal with iconic American director Spike Lee.
Joost does seem to have both a headstart and the upper hand in content at the moment, being the brainchild of the two billionaires who founded Skype. However, until I get my hands on Babelgum, it’s hard to say
If you want to try out Joost drop a comment on this post. In the email field, use a real email address. Please include your real name as well. Make sure you have a high-speed Internet connection and a reasonably new computer running either WinXP or Mac OS X. I don’t know about Vista, and I don’t think Linux is quite ready yet. Note that Joost can eat up up to 300 Mb of bandwidth in a single hour of viewing. If you have limited monthly Internet access and/or very little hard drive space, you may want to pass.
I am limiting invites to the first twenty requests. I’ll post a “NO MORE JOOST INVITES” at the bottom of this post when that limit is reached. (It may be a while, since this is a new blog.) Or you could invite yourself [via Digital Alchemy] thanks to GigaOm/ NewTeeVee.
And please, please don’t request an invite, download Joost, and then expect me to answer support questions. I have absolutely nothing to do with the development of Joost. I’m just an Internet TV fan like yourself. See the Joost general questions page for more details.
[INVITE UPDATE] Invites remaining: 19/20.
Comments
5 Responses to “Internet TV: Joost vs Babelgum”
Leave a Reply
i would love to try this out
@Tony: Done. I’ll do a batch each Sunday until all invites are gone.
Hey Raj (and everyone else). I work with Babelgum’s PR firm. Here’s a username/e-mail and password for you:
username/e-mail: babelpro35
password: beta35
Keep in mind, this is the pre-open beta version of the platform. The open beta will have all the bells and whistles like smart channels, more content, etc. Enjoy.
W
@Wilson: Very cool. Thanks so much.
Actually, I just tried logging in and the site is expecting a proper email address. I tried “babelpro35@babelgum, but it didn’t work.
Tony, your Joost invite has been sent