Of all the “Internet is TV” promises heard over the past few years, Joost is the closest I’ve seen so far to the real thing. After finally receiving my beta test invite (sorry, I don't have any invites left), I’ve had a weekend to try it for myself, and I’m pretty impressed with what I see.
The channel guide is cleanly broken down by title as well as genre, and is of course searchable. The interface is completely transparent and disappears soon after a video starts. The star of the show is of course the full motion, full screen video, which looks pretty good on my MacBook, though it could be a bit annoying to watch on anything larger. It has a channel chat feature (which I could care less about, but some will find it cool), some widget thingies like an RSS news feed and a clock that you can pin to your screen to keep track of how much time you've been wasting spent.
I watched the first episode of Comedy Central’s Stella, some music videos, an indie flick, and last night caught a National Geographic nature show and an episode of Rocky & Bullwinkle with my kid. Something for everyone.
It’s still in beta so a lot of things need to be worked out. I experienced a lot of lagging, stuttering video and in some cases programs became unavailable halfway through watching them. I’d of course love to see more channels and more content (some UGC, perhaps?). I’m sure it’s going to become an advertiser’s dream once the community is built.
