How did the people at Joost know that today was both iPhone App Day and My TiVo Is Dead Day at Tuned In? However they managed it, it was today that the online-video site launched an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. That Survivor episode that perished with my TiVo? They got me covered. (Unfortunately, it was a ripoff/clip episode. But it’s the principle!)
I’ve been messing with the app this morning, and so far the experience is in some ways superior to watching Joost on a computer. That’s mainly because to me watching any online video is superior on the iPhone to the computer. It’s partly a function of the superior display, partly (maybe) my laptop’s processing power. But there’s also something better about the scale. On an iPhone, or other small screen, a web video pretty much fills the screen. There’s something satisfying about that; the image seems bigger, even if it’s not (and I usually hold it closer to my face). I usually watch YouTube and iTunes videos on the iPhone now, for that matter.
My main complaint is the searching and browsing options. Like the web interfaces of many video sites, a search on the Joost app for, say, “Survivor” turns up individual episodes of the show (along with other videos that have the word in the name). It would be useful to be able to find individual show pages, so that I’d know how many episodes of Survivor there are to watch, or how many episodes of Gary Unmarried there are to avoid. (Besides the CBS programming, Joost has web videos, music videos and clips from TV shows like A Colbert Christmas and SpongeBob SquarePants.)
Still, I’m more likely to use the app than I am to use the Joost site. Now who’s going to hook me up with some iHulu?
