Digital and satellite TV stations have given us so many channels to choose from it's sometimes difficult to decided on what to watch. And with the availability of shows on the Internet that decisions has become even harder. What if you could just type in what you felt like watching, maybe something romantic or some dancing and a list of videos that fit your criteria all came to you ready for viewing. If you like the idea of watching videos this way then iSofa may be what you've been waiting for.

In order to use iSofa, simply type in a search string and iSofa will bring back videos that matches your search and displays them in a heads up display type interface. From there you can just let them play in order or pick and choose what videos you want to watch.

The site is clearly in beta as some options only have graphic placeholders instead of actual functions. Also video quality is poor when you have your browser scaled larger than a post-it note, so we wouldn't even recommend you try the full screen option at this time.

Despite the negatives, we really like the idea behind the site and hope that in future versions iSofa increases the video quality as well as include an option to save favorites videos.

So far we like what we've seen and iSofa just might have something here.

At some point we're going to stop calling all of these internet TV platforms "IPTV" and just start calling them TV. Of course, one of the main differences between live TV and Joost is that Joost isn't well... live. But it looks like that could change early next year.

PaidContent:UK reports that Joost will start offering live streaming television programs to US customers during the first quarter of 2008. While most of the content available through the peer-to-peer software right now is on-demand, Joost officials say the platform can also transmit streams at the same time as they are broadcast on television. Once the program is finished, users will be able to watch an on-demand version.

If Joost can pull this off, and if the company can sign enough content partnerships with networks and sports associations like MLB, Joost could eventually provide the ability to watch TV on any computer without first installing a TV tuner. Better yet, since you're not limited to local broadcasts, you'll be able to watch television programs from around the world.

On the other hand, something tells us most networks are still going to want you to watch their programming live on television or via their own websites where they have more control over the advertising.

Defying all conventional logic, Joost has upgraded its internet TV client to version 1.0 -- and it's still in beta. That means you can only download Joost 1.0 if you're a current beta tester, or if you know someone kind enough to send you an invitation.

There are a few new features and performance tweaks in Joost 1.0 beta, including a modified user interface, larger icons, and the ability to customize your interface by dragging and dropping channel thumbnails.

Joost 1.0 is also supposed to work better on slow networks and will try to restart stalled video streams. Probably the best news is that the developers have finally included an updater service, meaning you won't need to download an installer file every time an update is released. But honestly, the latest version of Joost still appears a bit buggy to wear a 1.0 label. At the very least, this should be considered Joost 1.0 RC1.

The Joost team also reports that you'll need to install and run Joost 1.0 as an administrator if you're running Windows Vista, which is all well and good, but we were unable to get the program to work properly on our Vista system. It starts up just fine, and will resume the last video you were watching. But when you try to pull up a channel menu in order to switch videos, nothing happens.

Update: It looks like Joost has added a download link to their front page, meaning the public beta has begun. No more invitations needed. Also, a few days into the beta, we noticed that our difficulty pulling up the channel guide has disappeared. Perhaps it was a network congestion issue, but the beta seems to be working well now. And finally, Joost has added links to featured content to their web page. Want to watch La Femme Nikita episodes? Just click the "play now" button to launch Joost and the show will begin to play.

[via eFluxMedia]

What do you do if you have the phrase, "helped create the internet" on your resume? Start a networking company of course.

An original team member who helped create the Internet, Arpanet, has launched a new hardware company designed to take advantage of next generation IP services. Larry Roberts' new company, Anagram has developed a hardware device designed for next generation video, voice and data called the Flow Router. This device can eliminate performance issues on network applications such as VoIP and IPTV. Anagram can guarantee the quality of video, voice and speed of downloads through the Router by using Behavioral Traffic Control to prohibit traffic from using a specific share of resources running on the network.

The Anagram FR-1000 Flow Router has been testing in corporate network environments and is currently on the market.

[via informationweek]

Right now, most people want to watch TV on the TV. And as we've described before, getting Joost to work with your TV set involves several (kind of) complicated steps, like making sure you have a video card with TV-out, a computer close to your television, and the time and energy to figure out how to program a computer remote control to flip channels on Joost without a keyboard and mouse.

So it's good to hear that Joost is in talks with hardware makers to embed Joost in devices like cable boxes and HD-DVD and Blu-ray players. No more fighting to connect your PC to your TV. Turn on your cable box, and Joost is right there.

But at that point, isn't Joost just a new interface for video on demand, with less programming than you'd get from Comcast? Part of the whole selling point of Joost was that it made the experience of watching internet video a bit more like watching TV. If you're actually, you know, watching TV on it, does Joost actually bring anything to the table?

Sure, you'll be getting your video from the internet instead of directly from your cable provider, but to date, that's actually meant lower quality and occasional buffering issues. And while there might be a wider selection of obscure content from independent producers, we're not sure that's actually a selling point.

What do you think would you be more or less likely to use Joost if it came with your cable box?

Okay, we're getting about as tired of writing Joost news as you are of reading it. But this is kind of big. The internet television platform started by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström has raised $45 million in capital.

Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Li K-shing, and CBS have all put some money in, although that's not a comprehensive list. So far, Joost had been funded primarily out of the pockets of Friis and Zennström.

Given the game-changing nature of the duo's last project with Skype, it shouldn't be a huge surprise that Joost is gaining momentum as it nears an official release. The company continues to sign major content partners, overcoming one of the earliest criticisms: that there was nothing worth watching.

And while Joost has experienced some server overload since widening its beta test group in recent weeks, the overall user experience is pretty innovative and nothing at all like YouTube, which is what most people think of when you mention internet video these days.

Internet television platform Joost is inching closer to a public release. While we might have been expecting version 1.0 to follow a series of 0.9 releases, Joost surprised us with a 0.10.2 "Now For Friends" edition.

Last week Joost announced current users could invite an unlimited number of friends to join the closed beta. In practical terms, that meant giving all users 999 invitations. The latest version doesn't even include a number of invites.

Version 0.10.2 also includes some bugfixes and some new sharing features. For example, you can send users a link to the program you're currently watching. If you click the "i" button next to the title of the show you're watching, you can copy a link and paste it to an email or any other document.

That URL will bring up the landing page for the show you're watching. If you already have Joost installed, when you click the "Click to start Joost" link on the landing page Joost will start, or it will change shows if it's already running.

This doesn't seem nearly as useful as being able to embed video clips on a blog or website, but it's sort of social, right? In other Joost news, the company is continuing to sign major content partners to actually provide viewers with something worth watching.

It's the age old story, company launches nifty new product, everything works great. Company upgrades said project, it breaks.

A few days ago Joost moved from a closed private beta to an almost-public beta by giving every current and new user 999 invitations to give away. Apparently the servers couldn't handle that much traffic and Joost CEO Fredrik de Wahl writes on the Joost blog that the company is working on a fix.

For a company that's signing advertising and content deals left and right in the hopes of being the next big thing on the Internet, this is a rather unfortunate setback. But it's better to have these kind of errors during beta testing than after the product is officially launched.

I love the idea of YouTube. The democratization of content creation, everyone having a shot at their own 15 minutes, the very real and ephemeral feeling that a dynamic community nurtures. What I don't like are 15 year old kids whining about their lives on webcams or replying to someone else's creative work with derogatory juvenile comments. Call me a curmudgeon but, my idea of entertainment isn't colored by an attention span which shares its depth and breadth with that of a teetsy fly. There are some excellent things on YouTube, but they're buried in a pile of useless drivel.

Dovetail is like rethinking YouTube with an eye on quality of video and of content. There are no webcam replies, no commentary flame wars, just good film produced by independents with an eye for visually aided storytelling. It's the kind of service that, fed with enough constantly new content, could make you think seriously about giving up your TV. Dovetail does require you to install a simple application that lets you to tag videos to download and watch in full quality after viewing short flash quality webclips. It's well worth the install, based on the open source Azureus Bittorrent client and is relatively simple to use.

End to end Dovetail works very well, with its only drawback being a limited quantity of content. There are a few hundred short to full length titles in the Dovetail library at current, but with the number of sharp young filmmakers, and a pleathora of comparatively inexpensive equipment available these days I could certainly forsee a time when Dovetail, or a service quite like it, retires the current concept of a TV channel to the dustbin of history.

That Xbox 360 in your living room? It's not just for video games anymore. In addition to the high definition movie download service Microsoft launched earlier this year, you can expect an IPTV service to launch towards the end of 2007, effectively turning the video game console into a personal video recorder and multimedia device.

You'll be able to watch live streaming broadcasts, and you can even a game while recording a program in the background. Of course you'll get all the usual benefits of a personal video recorder, like an on-screen program guide and the ability to pause, rewind, and fast forward through recordings.

While there were rumors that Microsoft would announce a brand new version of the Xbox 360 capable of acting as a traditional video recorder, going the IPTV route means that Microsoft can roll out these new functions with a software update, no new hardware needed.

There are no details yet on pricing and whether you'll need to install a larger hard drive on your Xbox 360 for the service to work, although I'd imagine that you'd really want more than 20GB.

All the Google hype this week is getting downright dizzying, so let's try to consolidate a few of these things. Robert X. Cringely is vehement that Google is about to revolutionize TV advertising. "Google is going to let the telco and cable companies burn their capital building out IP-TV," says Cringely," knowing that Google will still be the only game in town for the crux of the whole thing: the ability to show every viewer the specific ads that companies will pay the most to show him at that specific moment." Over at CNN Money, however, Paul R. La Monica says maybe Google is about to buy Monster.com and take over the classified ads business. La Monica doesn't fail to identify that Google Base is already serving classified ads even though most people haven't figured it out yet. What is Google really up to? Don't look at me.