Category: Video

It's exciting that Sprint's 4G network will be able to support services like video chat and YouTube on the upcoming HTC EVO phone, but it's a bummer that a $10 "premium data" fee will apply for these bandwidth-intensive applications. There was a story going around -- even on our sister site, Engadget -- that Qik would be charging another $4.99 a month for its video chat service, on top of Sprint's ...

Google's new Google Moderator platform allows YouTube users to poll their audience and solicit submissions for questions to answer or new video ideas. It adds a new level of control over comments that might help make YouTube's generally substandard comments readable. Moderator gives you control over the topic, length of submissions, and the type of submissions you want (Questions? Votes? ...

As if it wasn't enough that Fring already provided a single app to chat with your friends on multiple IM networks, and make voice calls, they've just released a new update for Android phones which enables video calling. If you've got an Android handset with a front-facing camera like the HTC Evo or Samsung Galaxy. Former Download Squad editor Brad Linder gave Fring a shot on his N1 running ...

With the announcement of WebM, the big-deal new open media format for the web, the average user was probably wondering, "How the heck do I convert my videos to this new format?" The popular cross-platform media player and converter Miro has an answer to that question. Miro Video Converter is claiming the title of first VP8 / WebM video converter app. Miro Video Converter 2.0 also includes some ...

Now that the VP8 video codec has been open sourced and we've been told numerous apps (including four of the top-5 web browsers) will support Google's WebM, maybe you'd like to test it out? You're in luck: Google, Mozilla, and Opera have preview builds ready to go! Bear in mind that this is the first cut at implementing WebM, and it's not perfect. While the standard-def trailers I watched on ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/05/20/adobe-flash-player-p2p-streaming-video/'; Adobe's product manager of Flash Media Server recently spilled the beans about his company's efforts to build the upcoming release of Flash player 10.1 to fully utilize a built-in P2P network, specifically meant to alleviate bandwidth costs for media providers. The service would work through ...

With one big announcement, Google may have just settled the ongoing battle over the media format of choice for the open Web. At today's Google I/O conference, Google backed WebM, a new project that will attempt to offer a standard, open format for audio and video on the web. WebM is made up of the VP8 video codec, the Vorbis audio codec, and a container format based on Matroska. The code is ...

I'd love for fifteen or twenty minutes to go by without my Google Reader barfing out yet another piece of software patent or "HTML5 video codec war" news, but that's how it is. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the video tag didn't become standardized until HTML6 or 7. One serious downside to the lack of consensus is the fact that your browser may very well not have built-in support ...

Web TV site Hulu just introduced a new video player that's frankly pretty excellent, but the new features might be overshadowed by the ongoing debate over HTML5 support. It seems they can add all the features they want to their web player, but the users' focus is on enabling HTML5 playback so Hulu will play on iPads and iPhones. The problem isn't that HTML5 vids aren't ready for users, it's that ...

YouTube downloaders are a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, many of them are thinly veiled malware/adware containers, or they are just plain cruddy. What makes youtube-dl special is that it's cross-platform, free, open-source, and CLI-based. If you don't know what CLI means, you probably don't need it :). In a nutshell, though, it lets you download videos from the command line (you can see a CLI ...

Fun Tourist Attractions calls itself a "visual travel guide," and the name is pretty fitting. It's a large, carefully curated collection of attractions in places all over the world. You won't find stuff that is really "off the beaten path," but it's great for quickly figuring out what some of the most popular attractions are, wherever you're going. Each location has a list of attractions that are ...

It's about time! In the next few weeks and months NVIDIA will unify its driver releases. No longer will you have to seek out graphics drivers from your laptop's manufacturer: you'll be able to simply grab the drivers from the NVIDIA website. Dubbed 'Verde', these drivers will presumably tie in with new hardware slowly emerging from the NVIDIA factories. These laptop drivers won't be part of ...

Handbrake is a great tool for ripping DVDs and it's typically the one recommended by power users. Less experienced users, however, may find the interface a bit too complicated. VidCoder offers a solution to that problem. It's basically a simplified fronted for Handbrake offering only the necessities. Choose a source, a destination folder for your rip, a preset encoding profile, and click ...

I almost cried today, but I'm not ashamed! There's a new viral video in town, you see, and while it's not quite as cute as the 2-year-old using an iPad, it's just as astonishing. Ladies and gentlemen, Virginia's new iPad (video after the break, too). Feast your eyes upon a 99-year-old using her very first computer. Marvel at the similarities between the genius tot and the geriatric grandma. Gawp ...

Although YouTube has long since given up on its paid download feature, the popular video site has moved on to something bigger and better: movie rentals. You can now grab a 48-hour rental from YouTube for anywhere between 99 cents and $3.99. YouTube's rental library started back in January, when it offered a selection of movies from the Sundance Film Festival, but it's now expanded into all kinds ...