Winter time is movie time. Heading out to the movies with friends in the afternoon, getting some popcorn, nachos, coke and then snuggle into the seat as the story unfolds in front of you. But will you enjoy the movie? How did you pick? Did you pay attention to the trailers last time?

While movie reviews, advice from friends and box office ratings are very important, only a good trailer makes a story come alive and transports the atmosphere of the story it’s going to tell. Movie trailers are powerful tools of the movie industry, but with a little bit of experience you can tell by the trailer whether or not the movie is as good as they’re trying to make it sound.

Other than at the movie theater, you can browser movie trailers on the internet. Here are the best sites to watch movie trailers online.

Hollywood.com

Here’s a fantastic site for browsing movies randomly, although they do provide a search feature. The Trailers section is kept very basic, with a playback window on top and a block of 4 x 4 snapshots from different movies below which you click to play the trailer. This way you can stay on a single page to watch several trailers and don’t have to move back and forth between pages.

Other than the title of the movie, there is no information provided and that’s at once both the biggest drawback and advantage. On the one hand there is no way to know what kind of movie is hidden behind that little preview image and you may hate a certain type of movie. On the other hand, this is the best way to discover something new. However, the search will locate actors and movie titles. So there is a way of filtering.

TrailerSpy

TrailerSpy features trailers for movies, TV, games, books and music. On the main page it’s got a little frame where you can browse through movies opening this week and in the movies section you can browse the most popular movie trailers. In a menu on the right you can pick types or trailers, such as mainstream, independent or classic.

Each movie trailer contains a small description and is tagged. Of course you can search trailers that way, which works very well. The code for each trailer can be copied and embedded elsewhere. Users can leave a comments and related trailers are shown on the side.

The site allows you to sign up, save favorites, create playlists, add your own videos and join groups.

Yahoo! Movies

The major advantage of mainstream sites such as Yahoo! is that they often offer custom sub-pages for different languages and/or countries. Thus Yahoo! movie trailers also come in Deutsch, Français, Español, Italiano and certainly more.

The site is mainstream and thus contains a ton of material and information, yet it’s clear and easy to navigate. The top of the Trailers & Clips section contains featured premieres, below you can browse through trailers of movies that are coming soon. Furthermore you’ll find recently added and most popular trailers as well as trailers for movies opening this week. This description refers to the US page and the site organization may be different for local versions.

IMDb

If you’re looking for the trailer of a specific movie, for example an old or foreign language movie that may not be available on the mainstream sites, head over to the Internet Movie Database. It’s not a great resource for browsing trailers, but IMDb has an incredible database which includes trailers, featurettes, interviews or links to sites that provide trailers for countless movies.

Once you have picked a movie, you will want to know about its show times. Ryan recently wrote an article on 3 Ways to Check Movie Show Times in Your Area. This will work if you’re in the US, Canada or UK (maybe). Outside these countries, try your local Google, for example with these links:

Australia: http://www.google.com.au/movies

Germany: http://www.google.de/movies

Austria: http://www.google.at/movies

France: http://www.google.fr/movies

UK: http://www.google.co.uk/movies

Canada: http://www.google.ca/movies

US: http://www.google.com/movies

Enjoy your movie and let us know whether and how you managed to pick wisely! If you’re aware of any other good movie trailer sites, share them in comments.