Joost.

Joost is definitely worth checking out. It’s essentially a stand alone application that essentially turns your computer into an on-demand television.

I’m pretty sure Joost uses some sort of P2P technology to download video. But much of the innovation lies in how the technical workings are wisely kept behind the scenes. This is super important as it maintains a simple user experience. As a user, I really don’t care about the bandwidth used or download speed. I just want to watch video.

I found the UI - a tad confusing at first - relatively intuitive and unobtrusive. There’s a shift from active interaction to passive. Watching a video is as simple as browsing through channels, selecting a show, and it plays. It made me realize how brain dead simple television is, and how much work computers have to do to recreate this experience. Joost is a pretty good step towards keeping it simple.

Once I felt like the technology was stable (yes, this really is video on demand!), I could relax, and start browsing for stuff. Which is where the biggest, predictable problem lies - not enough content. Hopefully this will soon change, as Viacom just signed with Joost.

Still, even among the limited options, I found some cool stuff that I’ll return for - old episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle, indie shorts, and Indian music videos. Obviously, right now, cable plus Tivo blows Joost away. But Joost could conceivably scale to programming from around the world plus everything on the Internet.

And here’s the kicker: Joost is free. Supposedly there are ads that pop up from time to time, but I didn’t see a single one during an hour or so of Joost browsing.

In the end, it’s all about options. In the near future, it’s clear there’s going to be some compelling combination of the Internet, the computer, and the TV. Joost provides some clues as to what this could be like.

Note: Thanks to ParisLemon for sending me an invite. Here’s his take on Joost.

Additional Reading: Andy Bennett, Scobleizer, Engadget, 901 am

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