Justin Thorn

iTunes its not just for audio anymore!

This week I will be featuring a 3-part series on video on the web. Why? Because this is going to revolutionize the way you use broadband and change the way you watch video in general. Just last week I installed the new iTunes 4.9 on our TivoPC in the living room. Not because I was interested in listening to music but because I wanted to watch web video on the 51″ HDTV screen. Even though we have digital cable with HD channels and can record hundreds of channels from the DirecTV dish I have found lately that there just is not anything worthwhile to watch or record. I have turned to web video to fill this void. Believe it or not last week I spent more time watching videos in iTunes on our TV than I did watching any TV shows we recorded off traditional broadcast stations.

Web video has come a very long way from its early days. The quality has reached the level of DVDs in a very manageable file size thanks to H264 technology. I have been watching videos sized to fit on a standard computer monitor sized up considerably on our 51″ TV. The quality is still equivalent to watching a live broadcast from the cable or satellite company.

How am I doing all this with iTunes you ask. Isn’t iTunes just for playing audio. Not since the introduction of podcasts. Traditionally podcasts are thought of as an audio program that you subscribe to and is delivered each time a new episode is available. This is exactly how Apple advertises the feature to its users. What they don’t tell you is that a podcast (or vlogcast/videocast to some) can also do the same thing for video. You simply subscribe to a show you are interested in and new episodes are delivered right to your computer. Wired magazine did an article on this last week.

Now of course these aren’t copyrighted shows you see broadcast by the major corporations. Instead these are bloggers who have something on their mind they want to share with the world. Instead of taking the traditional route of writing a text post about it or doing an audio podcast they choose to make a video. Now don’t get me wrong there are a lot of people out there who think they have a compelling message to share but instead end up boring you to death. If your not careful you will run across videoblogs that resemble Britney Spear’s horrifying reality show.

To start you out I will recommend a few of the most popular ones I have found so far. These people have done such a great job creating their videoblogs that they could easily pass for professional broadcast quality. Im sure they spent big bucks on their production costs to reach this quality. Anyhow if you have the latest iTunes 4.9 installed subscribe to these videos. Rocketboom which is like a 3 minute version of The Daily Show delivering news in a funny fashion. MoBuzzTV which is similar to Rocketboom but not quite as crass. CommandN is a weekly tech show out of Toronto Canada. Diggnation follows the most interesting posts on the Digg.com social bookmarking site. Finally my favorite of them all is From The Shadows which is a tech oriented show with a huge fan base thanks to its pro quality TV production and editing along with interesting topics.

If you don’t have iTunes you can still take part in the fun by visiting their websites. Rocketboom, MoBuzzTV, CommandN, Diggnation, From The Shadows

Be sure to check back in Wednesday for Part Two where I describe how to find these shows and other tools that are more suitable for downloading and watching them with than iTunes.

Read Part Two