After much anticipation, I got my invite to Joost today. All I gotta say is “Wow” – this thing might actually work.

As soon as you launch the client, you get a list of channels that you can flip through. What makes this different is that you can not only pick your channel, but you can pick your show within the channel. Each of the channels has between 5 and 20 (or so) shows available to choose from. As soon as you select one, it starts playing, almost immediately.

It seems like the video stream is approximately 650kbits (~80K/s). At this point, it’s using about 20K/s of outbound traffic, presumably seeding to other viewers. Sometimes outbound usage will spike up quite a bit. I’m not sure if there’s a cap on how much outbound traffic it will generate.

In addition to flipping through channels, Joost has a widget system, that lets you chat with other users about what you’re watching, or get basic widgety-type updates (news ticker, clock, etc).

It’s still a little bit beta – audio sync isn’t perfect, and interface operations aren’t totally smooth yet. But wow, I could definitely see this, combined with iTunes, making a big dent in normal broadcast tv.