Jon Holato

Yesterday I received (via Borchers) an invitation from GigaOm, NewTeeVee and Joost to participate in the Joost beta testing program. For those who haven’t heard of Joost — pronounced “juiced” — it is a free internet TV service broadcasting hundreds of shows from some of the best channels around the globe. The official description on the about page is:

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

So with the introductory details out of the way, let’s get down into it. Joost is simply amazing. For one it’s free — can’t beat that. One of the biggest reasons I like it is that I don’t get MTV, VH1, National Geographic, etc. in my apartment, so just getting access to those channels is pretty great. However, where Joost really separates itself from other online video entities is quality. My wireless signal isn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread, yet the video signal from Joost still came in crystal clear, and as you can see in the demo video, it streams very nicely.

Now let’s check out the demo video I recorded. A quick disclaimer — the quality of this video is not great at all for two reasons: 1) this is the first video I have ever recorded and posted to YouTube and I haven’t got the brightness and audio levels all that great; and 2) it was recorded with my Dash. Alright with that out of the way let’s check it out…

So as you can see, a pretty amazing little program. Let’s take a deeper look at it through some screen shots.

(Click images for full size)

1) Joost opening screen

2) Channel Catalog — select a channel by category, popularity, or featured status

3) Widget Screen — invite friends, chat with others watching the channel

4) My Channels — a list of your favorite channels

5) Gtalk — yes, you can talk to your fellow Google users within Joost

6) Search Feature — search by keyword for content across categories

As you can see Joost is very impressive thus far, and as it’s still in private beta we can only expect it to get even better before it launches officially — no word on when that might be. I must note however that when trying to view some shows I received program errors and Joost would close itself unexpectedly. Installation was very easy, however, and there is ample documentation on Joost.com to aide you if you need assistance with anything.