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?

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.

Internet video platform Joost is inching closer to a public launch. Last week the Joost announced partnerships with 32 advertisers. Today the company announced that it is allowing current users to send an unlimited number of Joost invitations to their friends.

This is sort of the Gmail version of a public beta. You can't just sign up through the Joost homepage yet, but it shouldn't be too hard to track down an invitation if you want one. Up until now, each user got a limited number of invites to distribute.

You'll need to download the latest version of Joost, which is 0.9.4. As of about noon, unlimited invites still don't seem to be available, but expect an update later today.

Online DVD rental company Netflix looks like it's getting into the online video distribution industry. The company today appointed ReplayTV founder Anthony Wood to the newly created post of vice president of Internet TV.

Wood will be responsible for "development related to the company's strategic intent to deliver movies directly to subscribers' televisions via the Internet."

In January, Netflix launched a service allowing users to stream a limited selection of movies to their computers in real-time. Wood will oversee efforts to expand the number of titles available. Netflix also plans to develop streaming technology to send movies to cellphones and internet connected televisions, and not just PCs.

[via EndgadgetHD]

Joost 0.9 was officially released today and despite my anti-Joost tendancies I rushed to download the new version as soon as I could. Within the first 30 seconds I was logged in I managed to see an ad for Eclipse and T-Mobile which didn't exactly kick things off nicely.

After the initial ad scare however I have to say Joost is starting to get better and I didn't see any more ads. Here are some of the improvements you'll notice right off the bat:

New Username: If you've already got a Joost account then you can no longer sign in with your email address, you instead have to sign up for a username which to me seems somewhat pointless, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

More Channels: This is probably the biggest improvement in version 0.9. There are more channels available now and not more crappy channels you'll never want to watch, actual channels that have real programming you might have actually tuned in to see on TV. Big additions include Comedy Central and MTV which are currently showcasing a few B-list shows like Laguna Beach and Dog Bites Man but will probably add some better programming in the future. This was one of my hugest gripes with Joost up to this point, there was simply nothing good to watch.

New Invite System: Invites are now done through "My Joost" in the player window. You can invite someone to the system while you are watching a particular video. Their invite will say something to the effect "Hey I was just watching this great episode of Laguna Beach on Joost, you should check it out." You can also track your invites directly on the site.

Speaking of invites, we've gotten our hands on some shiny new invites to pass out and we're going to share them with you. Leave a comment with why you think you should be the recipient of one of our invites and we'll pick three people at random and give them a key to the kingdom Friday afternoon.

Update: We picked winners this afternoon (4/6) Congratulations to Rene, Doug, and Mike!

What's in a name? Lots of things, including the difference between confusing and creating potential users of your application, apparently. That's why the Participatory Culture Foundation is renaming Democracy Player, its internet television surfing program, despite sticking with the original for over a year.

"In all our debates about whether you could call something 'Democracy' and how people would react to the name, we hadn't realized that so many people would simply assume that the software was for politicians and videos about politics."

The new name will be Miro, which means, well... we don't know. But anyway, there's a lesson to be learned here. If you've got a potentially creative, but ultimately too specific and image-burdened name for your software, think twice about it. You can't always expect casual users to look beyond the name of an application to see its real use. So, lose the cool symbolism at the expense of losing users. Check out the official word from the folks themselves to get the full lowdown.

Democracy Player version 0.9.5 has been officially released, introducing a host of new improvements and enhancements since the 0.9.2 release back in November of 2006. Here's a brief highlight of what to look for:

• Simpler, more minimal interface
• New 'Share' menu on each item allows user to email a video or post to VideoBomb, del.icio.us, Digg, or Reddit
• VLC 0.8.6 on Windows version that powers Democracy has been upgraded with improved Flash video support
• Video downloads are now stored in folders by channel for better organization
  
• New pause and resume download functions
• Improved BitTorrent performace
• Drop-down menu feature for auto-download for individual channels
• Automatic thumbnail generation on OS X for videos lacking thumbnails

The application is immediately available in all PC, Mac, and Linux flavors. Of course, the team still urges users to keep an eye open for any potential bugs that might be lurking about and fill out a bug report where necessary. Anyway, the program is looking great thus far and this upgrade will be worth the download. Check out the full list of improvements at the Democracy blog.

The hard-working folks over at the Participatory Culture Foundation have made the Democracy Player 0.9.5. release candidate available for both Windows and Mac OS X platforms, and they're a-lookin' for bugs and want your help. Just a quick reminder, in case you didn't know: Democracy Player is the application for open-source 'internet television' surfing, and it's been chugging along over the past six months or more since its inception. There have not been any specific mentions of what features have been enhanced, so we'll just have to wait for the official 0.9.5 update. If the developers keep the ball rolling, it won't be unreasonably long until the big 1.0 strikes, I suspect. The Democracy team has been extremely timely about new updates. Anyway, use their bug report form to submit any faults you might stumble upon if you give the 0.9.5 RC a spin.

Speaking to business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Bill Gates looked deep into his crystal ball and prognosticated that in 5 years, TV will be a lame duck and watching video on the internet will be all the rage. Way to go out on a limb Bill.

"Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it," he said. A little late to the dance, Billy? Tivo killed appointment viewing, putting TV on your terms. What wider adoption of internet distributed video will bring and what the heads of major networks and news organizations should be up nights worrying about is democratization of content creation. More and more we're finding great entertainment in low-buck, short format indie video and, in five years, the upper echelon of 15-24 year olds who are currently rocking the funny on sites like YouTube will be a force to reckon with, possibly even taking notches out of networks like Fox and NBC.

What's stopping this all from happening immediately? Two things, monetization of content and a simple and ubiquitous TV/internet convergence device. For certain, any company who manages to solve either of those problems and catch the wave of public acceptance is headed for a big payday.

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's right folks, your favorite Internet TV player are now ready for download. The new features are: Playlists for better organization; Folders, also for better organization and foldering; Flash video support for Linux and Windows, (Mac can play Flash Video too, but it must be launched in another window); drag and drop; an overhauled menu, multi-language support; and lots of UI polish. Screencastsonline.com has put together a sweet screencast to show off the new player and its slick new features. Democracy player has had great features in the past, but this release is the best so far. Go check it out if you are a video fan or just plain love full screen video.