VeohTV vs. Joost Comparison
Today Veoh, an Internet video site, has announced its upcoming VeohTV application. VeohTV will be an Internet TV offering in competition with highly publicized Joost and challenger Babelgum. I’ve already compared Babelgum and Joost, with Joost clearly being more compelling right now. How does VeohTV compare? Right now very few people have access to the private beta, so we’re going to have to go by what information has been made public. With that caveat out of the way let’s find out how VeohTV stacks up against the incumbent.
In order to give a richer media experience VeohTV requires you to download desktop software. According to Ryan Stewart Windows will be initially supported and a Mac version is planned. Honestly the features offered by VeohTV are very similar to Joost, but have quite a few notable bells and whistles that definitely set it apart. Both applications can offer high quality video and DVR-like functionality, only VeohTV lets you save shows for offline viewing. For occasionally-connected mobile viewers this may be key.
The User Interface is initially very clean and easy to understand. A lot functionality is familiar like a program guide and favorite channels with a soothing blue theme. They definitely get bonus points compared to the eye candy chaos of Joost. Unfortunately this simplicity doesn’t last long. This is a powerful application with powerful features and lots of video… it doesn’t try to hide that very well.
Content is the big differentiator. Joost’s focus has been on high quality shows that you might find on a cable TV network: Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, MTV, etc. On the other hand VeohTV takes in content from anywhere on the web: sites like YouTube, MySpace Video and Veoh.com. In addition VeohTV grabs content from network TV sites like CBS and Fox. It combines user generated content with mainstream television to give its users a lot of choice. This may be VeohTV’s greatest strength and greatest weakness. This means that VeohTV will have a much more difficult controlling the quality of the content shown to its users. It’s also nearly impossible to classify the vast majority of material out there, so creating an easily navigable program guide for the content is a problem that I don’t believe VeohTV has solved. The screenshot of VeohTV’s program guide below has 81 pages of mostly nondescript channel names without categories. Who is going to navigate through all of that?
I guess this abundance of content is to be expected when your source is the entire Internet rather than hand picked feeds. Although with high profile backers like Michael Eisner access to high quality shows should not be a problem with VeohTV, unfortunately it will be mixed in with grainy home video of people’s cats sleeping.
Like Babelgum, VeohTV will have the ability to search for particular content, but perhaps the most useful feature will be it’s recommendation engine. VeohTV will offer you a custom channel filled with videos that it thinks you’ll find interesting based on other videos you’ve watched, rated and marked as favorites, sort of like a TiVo. It remains to be seen how well this works, but in my opinion it’s the best feature I’ve heard about. People like accurate, personalized content… especially when it means that you don’t have to wade through piles of videos that you’re not interested in.
Like other video sharing sites (where VeohTV has its roots) you can create custom playlists of videos you’ve seen and then show them to your friends. I’m not sure how useful this is in practice. It’s certainly not very TV-like, but it’s yet another feature that Internet TV can support, so why not add it, right?
This “add it and see if it sticks” philosophy is evident in the widget functionality. VeohTV lets you access a lot of content from 3rd-party sites while watching videos though a partnership with yourminis. Your widgetized desktop can then search del.icio.us for websites, Amazon for products and Flickr for photos all (hopefully) related to the video you’re watching. They throw in the weather and a notepad as well… how… useful. At this point it’s not clear if all widgets will be provided by yourminis or VeohTV but 3rd party support seems likely. Joost has focused on relatively unobtrusive widgets that enable sharing and commentary usually directly related to the video watching experience.
VeohTV also wants to provide a lean-back vs. lean-in viewing experience. Their application can take advantage of PC remote controls for navigating from the living room. Like Joost there’s also talk about embedding their software in specialized hardware to compete with offerings like Apple TV. VeohTV’s lack of control over content could result in a user experiencing incredibly poor video quality on their 60″ home theater… and they’re not going to blame the content. They’ll blame the application experience.
VeohTV might just be too different from TV to catch on. Joost offers a familiar environment that’s a few steps beyond regular TV. VeohTV wants to redefine the whole experience with lots of advanced functionality. That may work well for those who are early adopters that want high levels of customization, but the mainstream tends to buy into evolutionary, not revolutionary. The revolutionary stuff is just too confusing.
Overall VeohTV looks to be an excellent application that I’m eager to take a look at first hand. It’s certainly an ambitious project. If they find a way to present all of their powerful functionality in a simple, useable manner it could easily overtake Joost in popularity, but for now I’m skeptical that they’ll be able to execute. For additional perspective check out Read/WriteWeb’s incredibly rosy review with a lot of great information.
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I have tested VeohTV and so far I think they have developed a very nice application. By the way, that “2 of 81″ pages you mantioned, actally are not pages, but channels, it says 2 of 81, because in the picture the second channel in the list is highlighted, so its less of a problem.
Great review by the way, even thow you have not tried VeohTV at that point. Its open beta now.