Veoh TV, a desktop app which acts as a brother to the video sharing site Veoh, came out of its invite-only beta stage recently. For those of us that didn’t get an invite or are more recently still reeling from the Harry Potter book seven, I’ll start from the start. Veoh is an “Internet Television Broadcasting System that uses the Internet and peer-to-peer distribution technology to … broadcast quality video content.” (read more in their FAQ.)
What does that mean to you? It means you can watch all the seasons of Heroes on NBC alongside that cute cat video that your mother-in-law just sent you via YouTube. How do their servers handle it? Just like Napster did so many years ago, you download a program that stores a copy of the content you watch and serves it up to a few other users. That times a couple million users equals lightinging fast service. So, Veoh is “YouTube meets Napster meets Cable Television.” Yeah, I was skeptical too. Give it ten minutes and you’ll never want to go back to YouTube or Joost. Seriously.
Getting Started
The sign up process was easy and straightforward. After signing up, I was emailed a link to download the software. Logging in, I was presented with an amazing interface that seemed similar to Joost, but snappier and more intutive. The onscreen controls were designed to be viewed and interacted with from a large distance, but it wasn’t so clunky that I felt too close (especially since I almost immediately resized it to half my screen). Nothing, and I repeat nothing [including the much hyped Joost] on the web puts this much network and syndicated video at your fingertips. How did they do it? Ask Dmitry Shapiro, the guy who built this system from the ground up.
“Unlike Joost, which is a closed system with conten from a limited number of sources, VeohTV supports open Internet standards, and has access to virtually all of the video content on the Internet, on demand.” said Dmitry Shapiro, CEO of Veoh Networks. Think, almost any program that you can watch on a network TV website (24, Heroes, etc) is available through the very slick and very stable VeohTV platform.
Features
The program, as well as the website, breaks up the content into channels (from FOX to NBC to YouTube to Alf). In the website “you can browse the videos available on Veoh, create a user account and profile, interact with other broadcasters and viewers and preview videos within your browser.” But that’s nothing to the “Veoh Player software application, which provides automatic delivery of the content you want to get in full-length, original quality for viewing on your PC (online or offline), on your TV (its easy from most PCs) or on your portable video device like an iPod or Sony PSP.”
Did I mention widgets? A sure sign of web 2.0 is a tab labeled “Interact.” Inside it, you can stream video after fabulous video while reading RSS feeds and playing with all that YourMinis can deliver (including a wondeful pacman widget). At every turn it is easier than breathing to upload your own video content and share your master piece with the whole world. Want some hints? Check out the Viral Video channel once you get it all set up. Yeah, I said an entire channel devoted to viral videos.
There’s so much more! You’ll just have to check it out to get the entire low down. As this fabulous system demonstrates, design is a good idea.
 
Hearst Corporation announced today that it will acquire 
