Use Joost To Watch Streaming TV On The Internet

Joost is a service that allows you to watch TV on the web. Joost created a lot of buzz recently when it went into full business. Joost works using peer to peer technology; similar to song sharing services like Napster, Kazaa etc. Joost is a venture of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis founders of Skype and Kazaa. These guys received $2.6 billion when they sold Skype to ebay in 2005.

Joost is a new way of watching television. You can flip channels and watch hundreds of channels. Many channels are for worldwide viewing. Some are restricted only to US. The advantage of Joost is that you can watch whenever you want and as often as you like. No more schedules. Joost is supposed to deliver almost TV like resolutions and in some cases DVD like clarity.

Joost is still in beta and currently you need an invite from a user to sign up for the service. If you have friends using Joost you can ask for an invite. Once you sign up you can download the Joost software after which you can watch TV. Over 150 channels are available currently ranging from sports, to documentaries and cartoons. Many of the popular TV channels can be viewed on Joost. To check out the list of available channels click here

The clarity of the TV channels also depends on the number of people using the service. The more the number of people the better the user experience. Needless to say a broadband internet connection is necessary to get the full potential of this service. Also remember that you should not have restrictions on download from your service provider. Joost is a streaming video application, and so uses a relatively high amount of bandwidth per hour. In one hour of viewing, approximately 320Mb data will be downloaded and 105Mb uploaded, which means that it will exhaust a 1Gb cap in 10 hours.

The byword of Joost is “TV anywhere anytime”.

I have heard and read that the quality of the viewing is decent. I have still not tried Joost. Can any one send me an invite? I will sign up and try it out.