Joost Update 2: Game On

At first, there appeared to be the same issues Friday with the Joost live NCAA broadcasts as there were yesterday: The first several minutes of the first game I tuned into came across before the feed cut in and out, then dropped.

Joost recommended restarting the application if trouble strikes, which I did. From then on things worked with only a few seconds of dead spots — the Georgetown/Maryland-Baltimore County game came through in its entirety. (Although if you’d missed the last 2 minutes or so of the Duke game last night because of technical difficulties, you’d be pretty cheesed.)

Only one little glitch remained: The audio only came through the left speaker. Not that the 66-47 thumping the Hoyas dished out to the UMBC Retrievers (the Retrievers?) was a gripping telecast, anyway.

Joost sent an e-mail today to users describing the issues encountered on Day One: "The first half of the first set of games went really well. Unfortunately, we experienced some difficulties after that point because some routine maintenance had some not-so-routine aftershocks. We spent all night working to fix the problem, and things are looking good, though there might still be some issues."

I hope the startup works out all the kinks, and makes good on its plans to carry other live events, because the live programming is the best reason I’ve found so far to fire up Joost on my computer.

Pretty soon I began wishing for other features, like a mosaic view so you could watch more than one game/channel at a time, or better picture quality. Or how about DVR features? Even an ad-friendly Start Over-style one.

Incidentally, Joost’s head of engineering operations is now Matt Zelesko, who most recently was vice president of engineering for Comcast Interactive Media, where among other things he led the team behind the online video platform for Fancast.