Anyone who is fond of videos (which most of us are) has at some point or other bumped into the situation where you can’t play the video for the lack of codecs or proper software.
Lets first see what all is required to play a video file and then we will look at how to overcome the problem.
To play any video file that exists in the wildest corners of the web you only need 2 things:
Are you sick of Mac OS X Front row, Windows Media Center or want a media center for Linux. Boxee is a new kind of media center that runs on Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux, it will also support Windows in the near future (meanwhile check out cool windows media center alternatives). The framework that Boxee is built off of is XBMC which is the best media center available for Xbox.
I am a major movie addict. Movies are one of those few things I never get tired of. Over the last couple of years, I have come across many movie websites, most of which I don’t even remember anymore. However there were also ones that made it to my permanent bookmarks. Here, I want to share with you some of my favorite ones. More importantly, those that provide super-useful RSS feeds.
Check them out below.
We have covered quite a few websites and tools that stream movies and TV shows on Make Use Of.
There was Ditch Your Cable Company With Free, Legal Alternatives, 7 Excellent destinations to watch TV Shows for Free, the Interview with Top 5 Free Movie & TV Shows sites, and The only TV and Movie Websites you Need.
Even though the most popular sources have been covered, I believe there are still more to be seen, to put sources into perspective, to better harvest their potential, and to save time for quality entertainment.
Free music is and always has been one of the top internet favorites. (Remember Napster?) While the trend is already shifting from that dark p2p-age to the more civilized crowd, netizens today are still craving for free music and it IS available legally if you know where to look for it.
With millions of song downloads, the term “internet and music” can’t be separated from iTunes and the store. So, it’s natural that many people turn to iTunes to find (free) music.
One of the biggest questions nowadays is what the future of the net will behold. Some interpret this very literally and think the web should just “look better”. Others think there will be a great structural change. I’m part of that second group. Just like Web 2.0 was all about the community, Web 3.0 will show intelligence; not only displaying information, but processing it as well. These days we are seeing the prologue to this “Webolution”.
‘The Filter’ makes a perfect example.
It’s time for another poll. Last time we asked you about music players. Today we are doing the same for video players.
What video player do you use to play movies and other video files? If you’re a regular MUO user, there is a good chance you have a nice video player on your system. Something that is capable of playing pretty much any movie. So like we did in the past, we are asking you to tell us about it. Help us find the best video player out there.
FAVC is a free collection of tools used to convert your media files, such as AVI, MP4, WMV and more to a DVD disk. FAVC is currently for Windows only. You can convert one video or multiple videos to a disk, and it includes automatic menu creation.
FAVC is a frontend for a handful of other free software. It includes:
(Encoder)
| Lots of websites come and go, especially when it comes to TV show and movie websites. Being a major movie, TV show, news and documentary addict made me try lots of websites over the last couple of years. While many of those sites sucked, some of them were really good. Here are my top four websites for watching my favorite stuff online. |
Hulu is an excellent 100% legal source for TV shows and movies. If you were looking for a website where you could freely watch your favorite movies and shows online this is it. Most of the content come in pretty good quality. No ‘camrips’ here. There is also an option to watch videos in full screen mode. Plus it’s completely free, you don’t have to pay anything.
So you have found yourself up into the wee hours of the morning downloading your favorite television series from your childhood (don’t worry we won’t tell anyone it’s the Smurfs!) only to discover that it won’t play?
Maybe it’s the video, audio or even both. What do you do?
I have been using a tool called Gspot for a long time now to figure out what is going on with my videos. This is how it works. First download the Gspot 2.70a package. It requires no installation and works very simply.
After you launch it, you will see a screen like this:
I really love watching documentary movies. Whether it’s a new Michael Moore movie, some 9/11 conspiracy, arrest of legendary drug cartel, life of Che Guevara, Iraq war, origins of Palestine/Israel conflict …. , most of the professionally made documentaries are quite interesting and educational. If you share this passion, here are some resources to watch documentary movies online.
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) Frontline known for producing in-depth lengthy documentaries on various popular issues, leading to numerous awards (see more in Wikipedia). There are over 60 high quality documentaires on their website, with each documnetary available in different formats.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past years figuring out how to get my DVD collection onto my PC so I can use my Home Theater PC (HTPC) to play my library on my TV. The following is the two step process I’ve come up with to do this; all other programs I’ve used either are not free, install spyware, or desync the audio.
Install and use DVDFab HD Decrypter.
The settings here are pretty straightforward. Select “Full Disk” and where you want to save the file. Click start, and about 40 minutes later you will have your DVD on your hard drive and ready to encode.
Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available.
Torrents are by far the most popular form of file sharing. People use them to download music, movies, software, books, games etc. In case you’re new to this then go straight to our mini tutotrial at the end of the post. As for all others, I would like to introduce you to a number of coolest torrent tools out there.
TORRENT SEARCH
(1) YouTorrent / PizzaTorrent - The only torrent search engines you will ever need. Both of them let you search for torrents on several popular torrent sources simultaneously (Mininova, The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt etc.) Search results can be sorted by various criteria, i.e. file size, number of seeds, peers and category (Pizzatorrent only).
With the abundance of TV Shows and Movie links sites nowadays it’s very easy to get lost for hours searching for the best quality version of what you want to watch. The reality of the situation is that virtually all the smaller sites get their links from the larger sites mentioned in this article. So if you want to find a new show or movie to watch online then check out the sites below.
So lets take a look at them ….
There are literally hundred of new Web 2.0 sites that appear every month and many of them sound interesting, but only a few actually get people excited and anxious to get their hands on the goods! Most of these sites start out in private beta, so only a few select people get to play around with them.
Here’s my list of some of the popular and most anticipated Web 2.0 sites that are still in private beta, but already have a pretty large following!
You may be well familiar with biggies like Youtube, Digg, Wikipedia, and StumbleUpon. They are all big and 100% user-powered websites. However, what about the smaller ones, focused on a single aspect and still able to attract a huge user base. So here you go, six really cool and fast growing communy-powered websites that you should definitely see.
1. Instructables - Extremely useful, entertaining and rather addictive online community where people share what they do and how they do it. Here you can find hundreds of excellent home-made DIY (Do It Yourself) guides detailing how to turn some of the garage junk into cool stuf, like invisible book shelf, hairspray-powered potato cannon or even making a wallet (from an old keyboard). See pic below.
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from people regarding my post on helping to create user-generated content on the web. So since this seems to be something that people find interesting, I decided to “do a George Lucas” and write a sequel! A long time ago in an internet far far away…..
Since I write for my own blog as well as MakeUseOf.com, I end up coming across a lot of webpages on a daily basis. Most are what I term “one-hit wonders” in that I glance at them briefly before losing interest and moving onto the next site. Basically pretty much like a Stumbler. I might consider bookmarking the site in del.icio.us but on the whole, approximately 90% of the sites I visit on a daily basis are ones I will only look at once.
Television sets and CD players are rapidly becoming a thing of the past for me. I spend most of my waking day in front of the computer and so I have adopted the practice of having DVD’s and CD’s playing in the top right hand corner of the screen while I work. Whether it’s a DVD rental from the shop, BBC streaming news broadcasts or the new iTunes download, media players have become an essential part of my internet life.
Here’s a brief selection of the media players I have encountered over the past few years.
Poor Yahoo. Once the unassailable giant of the internet that could do no wrong, it has been constantly overshadowed by the big kid on the block (you know who it is, starts with a G, ends in an E…..). Once I thought Yahoo Mail and I would live together for ever and produce lots of healthy email but then Gmail stole my heart away…..
But all is not lost for Yahoo. People love to put them down but I still love them and they are still a mighty force to be reckoned with. Here’s why:
(1) Del.icio.us
Here you go, a quick internet TV round-up: Top Internet TV players for your desktop, major directories to watch popular TV content for FREE, and a bunch of websites to stream live TV channels.
(1) Internet TV Players
Joost (www.joost.com)
Over 100 high-definition TV shows (Comedy central, Punk’d, Super Cars, Nat geo, etc.) and channels from various categories (Cartoons, Film, Comedy, Music, Documentary, Entertainment, Sports, and Liefstyle). More Joost screenshots here.
Zattoo (www.zattoo.com)
Zattoo provides excellent picture quality and viewing experience. Service is mainly focused on European channels and offers almost 50 live TV channels (some channels are limited to particular geographical locations.)
Over the last several months, in MakeUseOf Directory posts we have mentioned several websites that let anyone freely stream popular Movies, TV shows, Cartoons and other entertainment content. While some of the websites are long gone, some got much more popular and are able to maintain an excellent job at keeping content both up-to-date and free of dead links. Check out some of the better ones below. Listed from top to less preferable ones.
Top Picks
one question though. Do...
