YouTube lets you subscribe to channels so that you'll never miss a video from your friends, favorite filmmaker, or whoever else is uploading the videos that you crave. But what if you want to subscribe to a channel using iTunes, Miro, or another desktop application that will automatically download the latest videos for you to watch on your computer or portable media player?

YTPodcaster can create video podcast from any YouTube channel. Just enter a YouTube username and YTPodcaster will spit out four separate podcast feeds, one for iTunes, another for Zune, one that just shows Flash video, and a fourth that converts YouTube videos into MP4 format. If you use Miro or another RSS reader capable of downloading video attachments, the MP4 version is probably for you.

You can also use YTPodcaster to download any video from YouTube just by entering the URL. Or you can susbcribe to YouTube's standard feeds for your region, including the Recently Added, Top Favorites, and Top Rated feeds.

[via MakeUseOf]

The National Film Board of Canada has decide to share its archive with the world, posting nearly 500 short films on their web site. Videos cover a wide range of subject matter, from war documentaries to offbeat animation. There are even four feature-length films to watch in their entirety.

Keep in mind that the site is new - the NFB is still learning how to cope with the increased traffic and you may experience the occasional hiccup. As backup, you can visit their YouTube channel.

For more information, check the NFB.ca blog.

[ via BoingBoing ]

YouTube has been offering viewer the choice to watch some videos in "high quality" for a few months now. High quality videos aren't exactly high definition, they're just encoded at higher bit rates than your typical YouTube video. That means the video will probably look a bit sharper and cleaner.

Up until recently, you could only watch high quality videos by visiting YouTube or if you happened to run across a site where someone applied a little magic trick to their embedded videos. But now YouTube has added a new feature to its embedded video player that lets you toggle between high and normal quality videos wherever you happen to find them.

All you have to do is click play to start a video and then click the menu button in the bottom right corner of the playback window. You'll notice a box that says HQ. If it's grayed out, it means the video you're watching isn't available in high quality. But if it's black, it means you can click to watch the higher quality version of the video.

You can check out an example after the break.

[via CrunchGear]

The developers behind open source media player and podcast aggregator Miro are putting the finishing touches on version 2.0 of the cross-platform application. But you can download an early build of the next generation media player today.

For the most part, Miro 2.0 works like Miro 1. It lets you search for and download video podcasts from a variety of sources. If the podcast you're looking for isn't in Miro's directory you can add any RSS feed and automatically download and organize audio and video attachments.

Aside frm a new color scheme, Miro 2.0 also adds an integrated web browser and the ability to add a link to any web page to the program's sidebar. In other words, if you want to be able to watch videos from Hulu, YouTube, or another online video site, just add a link to your sidebar and you can open the web site with Miro.

What Miro 2.0 doesn't do is let you add sites to its search engine. So if you do add a page like Hulu to your sidebar, you'll have to conduct your search using the intergrated web browser, not the Miro search box.

[via NewTeeVee]

Cross-platform media player Boxee has added support for full length videos from ABC.com to it's Mac client. Boxee's Ubuntu and Windows software can't handle ABC video yet, but support is on its way.

Today's update is significant, because up until now ABC's web video player has been something of a walled garden. While CBS, Fox, and NBC have been making their videos available for distribution on Hulu, Fancast, AOL TV, MSN TV and a variety of other outlets, if you want to watch full length episodes of ABC shows you're pretty much stuck with the ABC web site.

ZeeVee's ZViewer does offer a full screen interface for perusing ABC videos, but video playback is rather clunky since you have to click a button on the screen to resume playback after each commercial. Boxee lets users navigate through the whole video with a remote control. No mouse required.

Online video site Veoh has launched a new pluin for Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 that shows relevant video search results any time you conduct a search on Google, Yaho!, YouTUbe, Live.com, Ask.com, or AOL. The Veoh Video Compass tool shows videos not just from Veoh, but from other sites including Hulu and YouTube as well.

You can watch videos without leaving the page just by clicking on a result from the toolbar. A video player will pop up on your screen, and you can even browse other related videos using a toolbar built right into the video player itself.

You can sort of do the same thing with Cooliris, but while Cooliris replaces your default browser interface with a black screen showing just the results of searches conducted using the plugin, Veoh Video Compass shows you thumbnails on the same page as regular text, image, or video search results from the search engine of your choice.

[via NewTeeVee]

Google has added a new video preview feature to Gmail Chat. If you want to share a video from YouTube or Google Video with someone, just drop the URL into your chat window. A thumbnail image will show up in the chat window, and if you click on the preview a small video player will open up on the same page.

As you'd expect, this feature does not work with web videos that are not hosted by Google. So you can't embed Hulu. DailyMotion, or Viddler videos just yet.

YouTube has started rolling out yet another new feature, the ability to download videos directly from their site without the need for any third-party apps. The first to receive the feature: President Obama's ChangeDotGov channel.

The download link appears on both the high and standard def page, but you'll get the same file (hd) either way. It's a welcome addition, especially if you're a netbook user - the .mp4 files play back much more smoothly from my desktop in WMP12 than in YouTube's browser player.

Videos from regular user accounts don't yet display the link, and there's no news yet as to where YouTube will be enabling direct downloads. You can always use a bookmarklet or Greasemonkey script to achieve the same result.

[ via NeoWin ]

Boxee is a media center application for Mac, Ubuntu Linux, and Windows that's based on the open source XBMC project. The Mac and Ubuntu versions of the media suite have been available to private alpha testers for a while now, and over 200,000 people have signed up so far. Last week the Boxee team removed the private label and opened the alpha up to all Mac, Ubuntu and AppleTV users who want to use the software.

They also launched a private alpha of a Windows version of Boxee.

Boxee for Windows looks and feels a lot like the Ubuntu version I tried a while back. The software provides a full screen interface for browsing photos, video, and music stored on your PC or for accessing online media from sites like Last.fm, Hulu, YouTube, and Shoutcast. The developers also recently added support for Joost and the BBC iPlayer, but this feature only works for users in the UK due to the BBC's IP limitations (it's worth noting that Hulu and other US-based services may not work for users outside of the US unless you use a proxy server).

One of the best things about the way Boxee handles online video is that every movie opens in full screen mode. You can tell that the developers have designed this application to use a full screen interface that will look as good on your HDTV as your laptop. The font size is a bit small for standard definition television sets, but Boxee menus and dialogs are a bit easier to read than the text areas in Zviewer, which is clearly not designed for standard definition TVs.

There are 48.5 million Wii's out there, and Blockbuster may be positioning itself to deliver video on demand to them thanks to a newly-announced partnership with Sonic Solutions.

Sonic is the force behind the CinemaNow service, which is available on LG networked blu-ray players and other devices - like Nintendo's wildly popular gaming console.

With the "Everybody's Theatre" streaming anime service set to go live on WiiWare in Japan January 25th, the stage is certainly set for the Wii to gain some additional functionality.

As WiiBrew users already know, the two USB ports at the back work just fine for attaching external hard drives. The Wii has plenty of room for expansion, and it would certainly make sense for Nintendo to offer a service to compete with Netflix on the Xbox 360.

Personally, I'd love to be able to watch video on demand with my Wii. Since I'm in Canada, though, I won't hold my breath.

[ via BetaNews ]

YouTube has been removing videos that violate copyright for a while. But now it looks like Google is taking a new approach toward some videos by removing only the audio tracks. I guess the idea is that some people upload fan-made videos featuring copyrighted music tracks. The company can leave the videos online while removing the music that was uploaded without the content owner's permission.

But it means that there are now a fair number of music videos as well as fan made videos on YouTube that are video-only. If you've ever wondered how well Seal's Kiss From a Rose video holds up without the actual song,now's your chance to find out. Or you can check out an alternate version of the video, also sans music.

Fortunately there's still music accompanying Rick Astley's dance moves.

The decision to remove just the music from the unofficially uploaded videos makes sense in the case of fan made movies. But for music videos, it seems like an odd move, since the music studios own the rights to the video and not just the music.

[via Mashable]

Friday night saw myself and our intrepid leader Victor Agreda Jr swing by the Crunchies. In amongst the swathes of free, MySpace-sponsered beer, we rubbed shoulders with many of the stars of Silicon Valley and acknowledge some of the notable services and devices of the last 12 months. Stay tuned for yet more photos from the after-party later today!

DivX 7, the latest version of the popular video format, is out. DivX 7 includes support HD H.264 videos in the MKV file format. It also supports AAC audio.

The company has also created a new DivX Plus certification program, which means that hardware products like DVD players and other set top boxes or portable media players that bear the DivX Plus label will be able to handle DivX 7 playback.

If all you want is the DivX codec which allows you to watch videos, you can download the latest version for free. The $20 DivX 7 Pro pack also includes tools for encoding DivX movies.

CBS, which owns the online TV portal TV.com recently redesigned the site, and today the company is announcing deals that will allow it to show online video from PBS, Sony, MGM, and other studios in addition to the Hulu and CBS content that's already available.

In other words, you can add TV.com to the long list of online video portals, most of which are showing pretty much identical content. What CBS hopes will set the site apart from the competition is the existing user base that uses the site to view TV listings, episode guides, and the site's social features. The site has active forums, reviews, and a ton of information about TV shows, actors, and other entertainment related items.

What it doesn't have is a user friendly interface for browsing online video. If you click on Videos or Shows, you may very well get to a page that has information about and video clips from a TV show. But it's not until you click on the full episodes button that you'll find out whether or not full episodes are even available. And I wasn't able to find a single page with a list of TV shows available for viewing like the ones you can find at Hulu and other popular video sites. Sure, most people will probably find it easier to search for content than to browse, and the search engine works reasonably well. But again, it just takes too many clicks to find out whether full episodes are available for streaming.

TV.com certainly has the potential to be a major player in the online video space. The site has a great URL and a good selection of content and features. But if CBS is serious about making it a portal for watching videos and not just reading about them, the site still needs a little work.