Category: Video

Ever since Google announced its 'open source' WebM video format, they've been slowly but surely transcoding the entire YouTube video library. According to an update from John Luther, the Product Manager for WebM, while speaking at the Streaming Media West conference, as it stands now, 80% of all video available through YouTube is in the WebM format -- a significant amount of video indeed. This ...

Hulu has announced that it will start making its Hulu Plus subscription service available to anyone who wants to try it, removing the previously existing barrier of needing an invitation to subscribe. Hulu has also revealed that its service is now available on all 2010 Sony Bravia HDTVs, with more Sony connected devices -- including Blu-Ray players -- to get access soon. Last, but definitely ...

Skyfire, the iOS browser that landed in the iPhone store yesterday, has already been removed from the store. It's not because Skyfire violated any of Apple's policies, though -- it's because it was too popular. The browser hit #1 on the App Store's top grossing apps list within five hours of becoming available. The unexpected volume of downloads hammered Skyfire's server capacity and bandwidth, ...

A couple of weeks ago, AirPlay support for YouTube videos mysteriously disappeared from beta versions of iOS 4.2, the latest update to Apple's mobile OS. That meant users couldn't stream YouTube vids from their iPhones and iPads to their desktops and AppleTVs. With the release of the iOS 4.2 golden master to developers yesterday, though, AirPlay is back in the YouTube app, and it's better than ...

As Windows Phone 7 nears its North American launch date, big name apps continue to appear in the Zune Marketplace. Today, Netflix announced that its WP7 app is now live and ready to download. As with the Netflix apps for other platforms, the WP7 version is totally free and will allow you to watch streaming content on your device. In case you're keeping tabs, the Windows Phone 7 app actually ...

Rémi Denis-Courmont, one of the primary developers of open-source media player VLC (Videolan Client), has announced that Videolan has sent Apple a formal notification of copyright infringement regarding the terms under which its iOS app is being distributed in the iTunes App Store. The root of the issue is this: VLC is distributed under the GPL, while VLC's iOS app is distributed by ...

This one's mainly for Internet Explorer 9 users: When you first load the Rough Guides' A Rough Guide To The World, you find yourself staring at a map -- it's divided into many many tiny little squares, and each one has a spinner. After a short while, the spinners start disappearing, replaced by tiny thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail, and get a beautiful Creative-Commons photo of that location, ...

Here's a little tidbit which was new to a few of us on the Download Squad team... When you right-click a YouTube video, there are site-specific options in addition to the Flash defaults! Some of you may be face-palming right now, so if you already know about this, feel free to move on with your life. If you don't, definitely file this under "good to know": By default, the Flash context menu is ...

Adobe has added support for HTML5 H.264-encoded video to its Photoshop.com photo and video sharing site, and adding an HTML5 video playback widget to Dreamweaver. That means that Photoshop.com videos are now playable on any device that supports H.264, including Apple's iPhone and iPad, regardless of whether it supports Adobe's own Flash Player. The Dreamweaver team's HTML5 Video Player widget, ...

Mozilla has just announced a new Firefox plug-in called Rainbow that will let users access audio and video recording capabilities through the browser. It's similar to something Mozilla tried with audio recording while they were developing the Jetpack plug-in system, but Rainbow includes video as well. Rainbow records using open formats (Ogg Theora video and Ogg Vorbis audio), and you can set it to ...

Starting today, signing up for Flickr is possible using Google accounts. This feature is rolling out as part of a new push from Flickr to support OpenID. Google is the first partner, but support for more services is expected in the future. Up until now, Yahoo-owned Flickr required a Yahoo ID to use. As you can see in the screenshot to the right, this is now also possible using an existing ...

Skype has just announced Version 5 for Windows. This version has been in beta for quite some time, and it's now officially out. Amongst the new features: Group video – which is still labeled "beta," even though the app itself is final Automatically recovering dropped calls – Skype redials the other party; from our experience, it sometimes intentionally drops the call when the ...

YouTube's Leanback isn't the only big screen TV game in town anymore -- Vimeo's gone and launched its own TV viewing experience, cunningly called, Couch Mode. As the name implies, it's all about watching from the comfort of your sofa, using a 10-foot interface, letting you get on with enjoying interesting videos, and not having to squint to read a tiny UI. Couch Mode still lets you do all ...

Microsoft Messenger for Mac, Microsoft's instant messaging application for Apple-made computers has hit version 8, finished its beta testing, and is now ready to download and use. Microsoft Messenger for Mac 8 will be included in the upcoming Office for Mac 2011 suite as well. Messenger for Mac has all the features you'd expect -- it lets you instant message, audio and video call your friends ...

Last month, VLC made the jump from desktop to iPad -- and now the app has gone universal. iPhone and iPod touch users can now download the popular player from the App Store. 9to5 Mac has gone hands-on already, and the experience looks very smooth -- at least with their sub-5 minute test videos. We're curious to see how it handles larger files and high-def content. We'll have our own hands-on ...