Joost, formally known as The Venice Project, has wedged open its doors to the public allowing current beta testers to invite anyone and everyone to use the Joost beta software.

For those of you that don’t know Joost is a new internet TV program that features 150 content channels with videos and TV shows being available on-demand.

It uses peer-to-peer technology to deliver video and aims to feel like a true TV experience.

Up until now Joost was limiting the amount of people it was inviting to try the software out. But as of today Joost has lowered the draw bridge a little allowing any current beta tester to invite as many of their friends as they like.

This leads me to beleive the full launch of Joost must be due very soon, possibly by the end of the month.

Joost has just announced that it will be adding independent films to its lineup of channels, but when I looked closer at the press release I noticed that Joost made this statement:

“Content creators and owners of all sizes are utilizing Joost’s high-quality, piracy-proof Internet platform.”

That is one heck of a bold claim to make. If Joost thinks that it won’t be possible for someone to record the videos broadcast on Joost, cut out the adverts, and distribute them illegally over the net then it is extremely misguided.

Joost has just singed yet another content deal which will add more high quality channels to the broadcast quality internet TV platform.

This time Joost is bringing independent films into the mix after signing deals with critically-acclaimed independent film and television producers ALL3MEDIA International, Alliance Atlantis, September Films and Wall to Wall; as well as independent distributors IndieFlix and Shorts International

VideoJug, one of the major instructional ‘How-to’ video sites, has inked a deal with Blinkx to have its videos made available through the Blinkx video search engine.

Blinkx will now go ahead and index the entire library of VideoJug’s instructional videos so they can be found easily in the Blinkx search results.

This of course makes perfect sense. Blinkx can provide access to more content to its users, and Video Jug can gain more visitors, a win-win situation.

uStream.tv is a new online video start-up that wants to capitalize on both user generated content and live video by providing a platform for broadcasting live video.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Yeh, an angel investor in uStream.tv. As always I probed him with my legendary 15 questions:

Just in case you didn’t notice I posted a selection of internet TV series and video blogs by internet entrepreneurs on out sister site, WebTVhub.

I’m pretty sure a good number of people who read WebTVWire.com are themselves entrepreneurs and will be hungry for this sort of entrepreneur TV.

Check out the list of Entrepreneur videos and episodes here.

The winner of the $50,000 Network2 video contest which I posted about the other week was announced last week (yeah I know its a bit late but I’ve been busy).

Entries had to make a post about how to watch internet TV, and since Network2 were running the competition they liked a mention too.

The winner is: (an advert for Network2)