I got some screenshots by turning off video optimization, but they're of lower quality than the optimized view.

Al Jazeera English TV launched today, based in Doha, Qatar, and I'm watching it, streaming very smoothly, after clicking "TV NEWS NOW," the top link on the left at that link. (This pulls up a "choose your video" offering a free trial using Real Player, and a subscription link to Jump TV.)

So far, it's like watching a CNN with a dizzying whirl of serious foreign-affairs stories: Local reports from Baghdad about yesterday's mass kidnapping, with "Iraqis pointing the finger at militias," Palestinians in Gaza, a rocket hitting Israel, suffering in Darfur, election results from Congo, reactions in Tehran to an Iranian insistence on its right to nuclear technology, Bush heading to Singapore and Indonesia, a tsunami in northern Japan, the arrest of a coup plotter in the Phillipines, a transport protest in Bangladesh, a new law changing the way rape is prosecuted in Pakistan, climate change warnings for Africa, Switzerland and France checking airports for stolen passports, icebergs the size of houses off New England. An interview with the U.N. envoy for peace in the Middle East is next.

Many of the presenters are British, including the blonde weather reporter, and all speak excellent English.

A commercial for the 15th Asian Games is like a movie trailer for Arabian Nights. A promo for a special about a kidnapped journalist has a clip of him saying, "They wanted me to say Al Jazeera was funded by Al Qaeda."

A business report graphic offers stock quotes from the DOW, NASDAQ, FTSE and Nikkei, and today's exchange rates. Cricket and soccer dominates the sports report, but there's a brief spot on .

The weather: Hot and sunny, heavy downpours in southern Iran.

No sign yet of staffers Sir David Frost, formerly of BBC (but there was a promo for his show), former ABC News Nightline reporter Dave Marash or Josh Rushing, former U.S. marine seen in The Control Room documentary, the channel's military-affairs analyst.

I'm sure some will monitor this closely for propaganda and bias, but this brief glimpse -- I've been watching for not quite an hour -- has exposed me to a lot of straight news reporting from countries we don't see covered here. Not a celebrity puff piece in sight, either.

I'll come back with background links later, but I thought you might want to take a peek before this pipe gets clogged. The announced URL, http://aljazeera.net/english, is redirecting to http://english.aljazeera.net/News.

Update -- The promised links:

WaPo, with an embedded YouTube clip. Will You Watch Al Jazeera English? Readers answer in comments.

Marash promises Al Jazeera English won't be al-Jazeera
Analysis: Al-Jazeera live (not in Thailand). Bangkok Post.

Not in the U.S. (yet?) either. Americans should also be able to see what 80 million viewers in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East can see. I hope it's made available on Cox. It can hardly be more propaganda-laden than Fox News, which we have survived and seen through, thanks to having alternatives.

I came away from Al Jazeera English's broadcast embarrassed at my ignorance of the news of the rest of the world. Here are the reported icebergs off New Zealand.