Online Video

Internet video has come a long way since its origins back in the early 1990's. Today, video-sharing has become a major form of entertainment on the net. Amateur and professionally-made films, television shows and segments, clips, news reports, documentaries, skits, comedy, and slice-of-life reality clips are provided for viewing online and on demand. Online, you'll find everything from current shows from broadcast television and cable to old classic movies and clips from the earliest days of film.

A variety of sites present online video. Hosting sites contain videos that you can watch on the site (streaming) or download. Directory or guide sites help you locate videos that might be hosted elsewhere that pertain to a particular interest area. Many of these videos are free, but there are also sites which offer subscription-based viewing, videos for sale, or excerpts or clips from videos for sale or video from cable or broadcast television. Many video-sharing sites offer an amalgum of user-contributed clips and ways to sort through these videos.

Video Hosting Sites

These sites host videos that have been contributed by users or video owners. For the most part, these sites integrate advertising into the videos or their presentation of videos online or distribute videos promoting television shows or movies. The commercials and ads make these sites possible. Although much attention has been paid to amateur videos, highlights of these sites include old movies and tv shows and full episodes of tv shows or documentaries.

• Google Video: Google's video collection includes the You Tube site. The search box on this site takes you to many other video hosting sites to match your query. The strength of this site is that google's search interface allows you to quickly sort the videos by duration, date, popularity, and ranking.
• Guba: a large collection of videos organized in a range of categories: Action, Animation, Classics, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Educational, Family, Foreign, Independent, Miscellaneous, Music Videos, Romance, Sports, TV Shows, and Thriller. Highlights include extensive BBC programming. Pet Peeve: it is very difficult to search for videos using the search interface.
• Joost: an in-development effort to merge TV and online video; now in its beta testing phase. The Joost player is a video client that you have to install on your computer in order to use the site, and this client is difficult to use, confusing, and has a poor user interface design. The selection of videos at this site is fair, but it is organized according to a branded channel concept (for example, there is a "Flimmer" channel as well as a "Global Axess" channel. These meaningless names make it difficult to discern what is actually available to watch. Notable highlights: "Star Trek" (original series) early episodes; "Twighlight Zone" (original series) early episodes.
• AOL Video: here you can watch a variety of videos including old tv shows ("Bob Newhart," "Lost in Space"); includes videos from the Hulu site.
• LikeTelevision: includes classic tv and movies as well as cartoons and commercials on demand
• MovieFlix: free movies and shows with email registration; contains many old public domain movies and shows, notable Film Noir collection; subscription access to move shows; site uses the Real Player client which is very easy to use, resize, stop, restart, and jump ahead in the clip
• Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive: library of free movies, films, and videos; digital movies ranging from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to videos of every genre uploaded by Archive users
• Television Networks: major television networks, particularly broadcast networks, offering videos on demand:
  NBC: highlights include full episodes of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien"
  ABC
  CBS
  FOX
  MSN

Video Posting Sites

These sites that present an amalgum of clips, user-contributed videos, trailers, viral videos, music videos, home videos, advertisements, promotions for movies or tv shows. These sites typically provide users a way to browse, sort, rank, or comment on the videos.

• Daily Motion: video sharing site that allows tagging and groups
• Yahoo Video
• MySpace Video
• Heavy
• Spike
• break
• metacafe

Video Guide and Directory Sites

These sites provide editorially-selected directories of videos. Use these to find special interest collections or to quickly connect with good videos without having to wade through search engine results. These directories do not host the videos, but organize, annotate, and maintain links to videos hosted at different sites.

• Popper's List: this is the place to visit if you enjoy historical documentaries on a wide range of topics.
• Movies Found Online: this collection of links organizes many interesting free movies and shows. Highlights include the extensive collection of documentaries.
• Classic Cinema Online: a well-prepared directory of classic movies in a range of categories. Good selectivity and handy Internet Movie Database links for the titles make it easy to find good, classic movies to watch.
• TV Guide's Online Video Guide: a guides to TV Guide's picks for paid videos, videos for sale, some clips, short videos, excerpts, and portions of longer videos, and popular videos or videos that are being promoted as advertisements for tv shows or movies; difficult to use and cluttered interface
• OpenFlix: directory of movies commonly thought to be in the public domain and works their owners are willing to let be distributed

Links

• dmoz.org Arts: Video
• Answers.com video

Is something missing or incorrect? Please send a correction.