Category: Video

As far as video players go, I'm pretty much a VLC loyalist. (Maybe "hard-core fan" is a better title.) It seems as though VLC's simplicity is the gold standard for players, and its sensible keyboard shortcuts are embedded deep within my muscle memory. That's why I initially regarded SPlayer with a measure of skepticism. I mean, I don't know this player. I've never heard of it before, and still, ...

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com has been pitching media companies on a streaming video subscription service that would compete with Netflix. Amazon has talked to NBC, Time Warner and Viacom about a service that would work on the Web, on mobile devices, and on Xbox 360 consoles. The service could launch in time for the holidays, and there's talk of bundling subscriptions with ...

Boxee, one of the best all-in-one media center apps, has just released a new beta that introduces a library of full-length streaming movies. Boxee was already famous for letting you watch and listen to streaming content on your computer, and hook the whole thing up to your TV, too, but its new partnerships with indie movie sites make it even better. With Boxee, you already have Netflix, ...

It takes a lot for a music video to grab my attention anymore. Arcade Fire's HTML5 collaboration with Google, however, does a pretty damn good job. Head over to The Wilderness Downtown, punch in the address of the home where you grew up, and watch the magic unfold. The "experience" is definitely one of the most interesting demos to come out of Google's Chrome Experiments thus far. It's a ...

It looks like Google isn't stopping at free phone calls to the U.S. and Canada In their never-ending quest to win new fans. They're also going to let you watch all the free, full-length movies you can handle over on YouTube! That's good. The selection, however, doesn't include current releases and there aren't a lot of big-name films. That's bad. But you can watch loads of classic horror ...

Clicker.com is like the TV guide of web shows (and TV shows online). It doesn't get as much hype as Netflix and Hulu, but does offer a lot of video content. Clicker is mostly worth talking about because of the iPhone app, though. Basically, it points you to content from all the video sites you watch for free (YouTube, Break.com, Revision3) and adds the ability to buy iTunes videos. With ...

The baited, belabored wait is over! After almost four months of iPad exclusivity, Netflix has done as it promised: the iPhone and iPod touch app is here [iTunes link]. The Netflix app lets you stream TV shows and movies straight to your iOS device -- and according to MacRumors, the service works over Wi-Fi and 3G. You'll need a Netflix subscription ($8.99/month), and 3G data costs will be ...

Over at StuffWeLike they've posted a video gem from Comic Con 2010 (of all places) of Google TV being demoed to attendees. Comic Con? Hey, a demo's a demo -- who are we to argue? What you'll see in the video after the break is darn near a geek's TV dream come true. Apart from adding super-slick search abilities to your DIRECTV receiver (Google TV can search everything from the program guide to ...

It turns out people don't like clutter. Surprise! Not that YouTube's interface is all that cluttered, but sometimes I just want to watch my video without having to see it in full screen. Well, it turns out that there's a whole genre of websites which specialize in removing all the crud and leaving the video: in other words, they generate spartan pages with your video embedded right into them, on ...

If you're an Android user seething over the fact that the iPad and the iPhone are getting Netflix streaming before you do, seethe no more! A Netflix employee has confirmed the company is hiring developers to begin work on the Android app, and the company's job listings on Reddit corroborate his information. As Mashable points out, Netflix's new "Android Video Playback Expert" will be someone ...

Last year saw the arrival of Coda.fm, a torrent site which offered a different take on music downloads. It's design is more reminiscent of a music discovery site or download store than a torrent indexer like isoHunt or TPB. Take.fm offers a similar experience, but for movie downloads. The site is relatively new, so you won't find virtual shelf after virtual shelf of titles to choose from, but ...

It used to be that when I watched a movie with VLC, halfway through the movie the screen would suddenly black out. Too late, I would realize that the screensaver kicked in because I hadn't touched the mouse for a while. It was so irritating that I simply disabled my screen saver. I think VLC specifically addressed this issue, but I'm sure it still happens with other video players. Mouse Jiggler ...

online-ConVert looks suspicious. The formatting is wonky, the name is poorly capitalized, and the whole thing looks really unreliable. I almost didn't cover it. But then I decided to go ahead and give it a chance, and I was pleasantly surprised by how thorough the service is. I tested it by converting a small MP3 file to Ogg. It offered me sensible options (like the option to set the bitrate and ...

So you've created a slick iPhone app only to be handed a rejection from the boys in Cupertino? Back to the drawing board, then... and time to take a good, hard look at alternative ways to get your project in the hands of iDevice owners. For PlayOn, the answer was an HTML5 web app -- which, according to VentureBeat's Devindra Hardawar, runs every bit as well on the iPhone as many of the video ...

While the spate of upcoming Windows 7 tablets may never get your engine running the way the Courier did, a company called UI Centric is hoping that their slick, touch-friendly interface might pique your interest. Dubbed Macallan, UI Centric plans to license the interface to OEMs for use on devices running Windows 7 or Windows 7 embedded. Based on the images UIC has shared, there will at least ...