I suppose I should feel like the cool insider for being a Joost beta tester. All I did was fill out a form some time ago.

Joost has a pretty logo, and their website is full of Flashy color. However, the actual Joost application experience is much more monochrome.

I find the GUI a bit clunky, but that's to be expected in beta. It's better than the ridiculously bad Comcast digital cable UI, a little. Personally I found the placement of navigation buttons to be awkward.

I spent only 15 minutes or so in my first try of Joost. Most of the time I was trying to scroll through channels to find something that actually interested me. This is where the navigation proved a bit challenging. I think my experience was hampered by the fact that I was trying it out at peak hours -- prime time. Maybe in the morning it would be better.

My first impression was that there wasn't all that much on Joost. I can spend hours surfing through what, 500 channels of television on Comcast, and find nothing on. Same with Joost, I fear. In the end, Joost can be only as good as the content it presents.

The low resolution of video is to be expected. You're not going to get high-quality video through the puny ISP bandwidths available today in the US. That puts an imperative on Joost to offer something different, something somehow better -- or at least other -- than what we find on the three-digit cable channels.

Maybe I'm the wrong customer because I'm watching TV on a 42" plasma HDTV. (Hey, it was a deal and it was cheaper than the smaller LCD.) I look at upconverted DVDs and HDTV programs and see something new: details. High resolution is nice.

I'll try Joost again and perhaps share some more thoughts. I hate to leave this post on such a down note, so I'll give it another shot. I want it to be great. I'll settle for okay.