YouTube is undoubtedly the biggest video site on the internet and one of these business success stories of the decade.

However, with copyrighted content increasingly being removed, the only way to save your favourite clips is to download them onto your hard drive. YouTube Downloader is a software that helps you download videos instantly and convert them into other video formats. The program is incredibly easy to use - just specify the URL for the video you want to download and click the Ok button. It also allows you to convert downloaded videos for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3 which is useful for taking your films on the move. The converter is a bit slow but it's a nice add on to have. One problem you may have is that when you've downloaded the clip, you may have no sound. This is easily remedied by downloading a codec which can be found on the developer website.

For those worried about the disappearance of their favourite clips from YouTube or those that just want an archive, YouTube Downloader is an ultra easy to use and efficient option.

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Make no mistake: the media industry has changed significantly in the last couple of years. Big corporations are now starting to consider the possibility that their traditional business models could well be about to crumble around them. Newspapers are facing the blogging threat, podcasting is the cool alternative to radio, and now the big TV stations must be starting to sweat a little following the dawn of free online video services such as YouTube, Joost and the one we're about to review: Miro.

After a few months in beta stage, Miro has reached version 1.0, which is considered as a new milestone in the production and development of video and TV content for the Web. Miro is defined by its developers as "the open-source Internet TV platform". In fact, it's been built by a non-profit organization called the Participatory Culture Foundation, which aims to bring together a community of broadcasters to create, what it calls, an 'Internet video ecosystem'. But besides all these elaborate definitions, Miro is simply a great application to watch online videos.

You could now be wondering what's the point of using Miro if you can get those same videos from other places? Well, Miro makes the process faster and much easier. The program uses open protocols to let you subscribe to video channels and video blogs that are fed in via RSS, and uses BitTorrent to download the files. You can also watch videos from Youtube and Dailymotion, or use it to subscribe to a Youtube channel you like, for example. The program supports video playlists and can resume playback just where you stopped.

The inclusion of the 'Channel Guide' is a welcome one, as it helps you get started with the program and also lets you search and browse the various channels effortlessly. Not only can you browse through the existing channel list, but you can easily add new channels simply by clicking a button to subscribe. There are more than two thousand channels available, and all of them are free. Beware, however, that the video quality may vary from one channel or video source to another.

Another great benefit of Miro is that it can handle a wide variety of video formats and, as a good open-source project, it ignores DRM and patents. These and other interesting features are used to compare Miro to Joost, but I think there's no reason for this comparison: they're just different applications with different purposes. In any case, Miro's first public release is an excellent example of how video content from different sources can be integrated into one single application and served directly to your PC in a fast, easy and elegant way.

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With so many devices to watch your programs on, it would sometimes be useful to have one universal interface through which to watch them all. Veoh Player provides exactly this enabling you to watch full-screen, DVD-quality videos on your computer, portable device, or TV.

Amongst it's many features, you can create your own library of video content, subscribe to video series, channels, or publishers similar to a virtual TiVo or SkyPlus system. You can also download and save videos from Veoh and from thousands of other websites including YouTube and Google Video.

Finding something to watch is quite easy - there's a TV-style guide or you can search via keywords or a remote control. Possibly the best feature of this program is that it 'learns' what you like to watch and recommends programs accordingly.

The downside of it is that it's designed specifically for the American market so options such as the Home Delivery service are redundant for users in other parts of the world. However, if you're a big fan of American TV series, you'll appreciate the fact that you can watch full-length episodes from ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX.

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If you want to download and convert videos from YouTube without having to spend ages doing so, look no further than this no-nonsense software. YouTube Catcher allows you to do everything (i.e. the downloading and conversion) from within the same window. All you need to do is input the link to the video and select the format you want to convert to and YouTube Catcher does the business for you - at a very quick pace to boot.

Rather handily, the program can also be used as a standalone file converter, letting you take a FLV file and transform it into a different format using a similar process. The program also dishes up a bevy of useful options, such as the ability to define the quality and resolution of the video, audio channels, codecs used and more. All in all, YouTube Catcher is a brilliant tool for quickly grabbing cool movies from the popular site.

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Have you ever wondered how to download videos from Youtube without having to go through the pain of searching the browser's cache or using a complicated third-party app?

The answer is Free Video Zilla, a download manager that monitors the browser in the background and lets you download any video that's embedded on any website you visit. It works with all the main browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Maxthon and Netscape, and even enables you to configure a custom browser.

Free Video Zilla works in a very simple way: just browse video websites like you would normally do and the program will automatically grab all embedded videos and show them on its interface. Now you only have to click on those you want to download, making sure you do it before the waiting list times out.

This easy process has two sides to it: on the one hand the program doesn't require any complicated configuration and downloads videos really fast; on the other hand, as Free Video Zilla monitors the browser, it grabs pretty much anything embedded on the website, and this can sometimes make it a bit difficult to distinguish the video you want to download from the rest of them. Plus, videos are saved only in FLV format so you'll need an FLV player to view them.

With Free Video Zilla you won't have to worry about configuring a third-party to download online videos; simply browse your favorite online video website and the program will take care of everything!

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Tube Sucker lets you batch download 1000's of videos of your favorite artist from youtube.com. Tube Sucker is the world's first software platform that makes downloading videos from the internet and watching them from your PC quick, easy, fun and enjoyable.

Tube Sucker is like a TIVO device for just about every video ever made. Type in a search topic or artist name, click and go! Come back later and have tons of videos on your hard drive ready for instant playback. Watch 1000's of videos on your hard drive with no internet delays.

Tube Sucker's Media Control Center, with its easy-to-use built-in media player, gives you access to all of your media files in one place. Everything you need is all in one application that makes the whole process of downloading and watching media seemless and fun. No painful waiting for things to download. You can even use a hand-held remote control that controls the playback of all your video, music, and pictures from your PC.

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With TubeTilla you can easily download your favorite YouTube videos and convert them to Mp3 and Mp4 format.

Simply copy the link of the video into TubeTilla and the program then automatically converts everything to Mp3, WMV or Mp4 format. For some reason however, the developers have not allowed users to convert to formats other than these such as AVI or MPG. It does however allow you to convert to WMV format meaning that whatever it has been converted to, can be played on your PSP, iPod, iPhone, Zune and Windows Media Player. The program is liable to frequent bugs and crashes however and it was only in the latest version that the developers fixed a bug when converting to FLV. The other problem is that the program seems to work incredibly slowly - even very short videos can take more than a few minutes to download and convert. On the plus side, it automatically converts as it downloads so it saves you time.

A brave attempt at an integrated YouTube downloader and converter in one although it doesn't really measure up to some of it's competitors.

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RealPlayer is so ubiquitous that the really is no getting away from it even though it's widely criticised as being too commercial and too bloated. However, you can't avoid the fact that it's an essential piece of software if you're surfing the internet regularly.

It is indeed bloated, intrusive but RealPlayer has alot of functionality - it can do a hell of a lot from streaming radio and video to burning CD's but it's often slow and cumbersome. One of the most annoying aspects is that it takes simply ages to start whether streaming a clip or just opening a standalone video file. This is because all of the hundreds of extensions and plugins that come preinstalled with it. There are also too many clicks and mouse movements required just to switch to a full-screen playback mode when viewing a clip on a web page.

In saying this, Realplayer isn't bad at all. It's comparable to Windows Media Player 10 as they both have some impressive ways of organising your music and for me the best feature is the CD burner which is one of the easiest burners I've ever used.

Like it or loathe it, as proprietors of the Real networks codecs, RealPlayer is here to stay for a long time to come

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Ever wanted to download videos from YouTube but wanted them converted in AVI format beforehand? If so, Easy Video Downloader allows you to do so with a range of qualities to suit your needs in AVI and even MPEG4 format which are the most common formats for most phones and portable devices.

Simply enter the URL of the YouTube video you want to save in the interface and click "Start." You must also select whether you want to save the film in AVI or MPEG4 format. The quality is reasonable in both formats although it seems that conversions to MPEG4 are considerably faster than AVI. However, even though there is a longer waiting time with this program than other similar efforts, the time it saves you in conversions is worth it. The program has now been updated so that it can even download the new high resolution videos that are appearing on YouTube. It's also much better at dealing with MySpace videos that before posed some problems due to the way they are embedded.

As a simple all in one solution, Easy Video Downloader is a nice little app, if a little slow.

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You've probably spent many hours pouring through the videos on YouTube and then the next day intended to go back and enjoy them again. However, often you either forget or simply find that it's been taken off due to a copyright violation. WebVideoCap solves this issue by prompting you to save FLV (Flash) video files every time you watch them.

Just enter your target URL and hit "Start Capture." When you've done browsing, you can see all your video files stored in the folder that you selected. WebVideoCap allows you to capture the video files of all the most popular video-sharing sites, including YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, iFilm, Metacafe, Putfile, and more.

For video fans and archivists, this is a simple but effective tool to make sure your videos are saved for good.

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Tubesucker is a tool to download, convert and catalog videos downloaded from the YouTube website.

The interface has a browser to search for videos directly in YouTube - pressing a button will add files to the list of downloads and will be included in the collection. You can choose the option of downloading directly in AVI or other formats such as the native FLV format. Tubesucker is really convenient for those who collect videos as you can simply select what you want to save and the program takes care of the rest - no need to catalog and organise them. However, the basic version is very basic indeed allowing you do nothing more than this. Tubesucker Turbo however features several other options such as downloading videos of songs in MP3 format, movies, web pages, perform multiple simultaneous downloads and upload videos to websites. However if you're just looking for a one stop YouTube solution for downloading, it a nice little application.

If you're continually wishing you had downloaded footage before it is removed or have trouble organising your collection, Tubesucker is a stress free solution.

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There are many reasons for wanting to download videos from websites like YouTube, perhaps you want to keep a record of something you like, or simply because you encounter frequent problems with your connection and the videos do not play smoothly enough for you to enjoy them. Unfortunately, there isn’t a 'save' function on YouTube but with Save2pc Light, the operation can be fairly quick and easy.

With this useful software, you can easily save any video you want in different formats, such as avi, mpeg or flv. There are also two other versions of the program, Standard and Pro which allow you to download videos from many other different web sites like Google Video and Myspace Video, and convert them for playback on iPod, PSP, PDA, iPhone and other mobile formats (features not available in this 'Light' edition).

The application has a very light, easy to use interface, and all you have to do is to decide the conversion type of the video you would like to save and finally paste the link location of your desired video. If the clip-size is around 10MB, the whole process will take just a few seconds.

For its usability and speed this really is a useful tool to have on your PC. We only wish that the more advanced features were included in the free version.

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Amaze FLV Downloader is an easy-to-use tool to help you download flash videos (FLV) at high speed, mainly from sites such as YouTube.

You can download multiple FLVs at one time or you can download them one by one. The user-friendly interface also includes a function to monitor the clipboard which basically allows you to drag websites from the browser into the program for downloading. The program simply requires you to click "Save Videos" to begin downloading the video(s) that you've selected.

It runs in the background - in the system tray - and always prompts you whether you want to save a video while you are watching one either on YouTube or another site with FLV videos. The key is that it saves you time and bandwidth because it saves the videos as they are playing in your browser rather than saving them separately. If you don't want to use the mouse, you can also configure hotkeys to trigger the download. You've also go the option of converting the FLV files to AVI as soon as they are downloaded although this takes up a lot of disk space.

Configure this program to start with Windows, and you'll find you've got a very easy to use video downloader to make sure you never lose another YouTube clip.

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Sometimes you find such a nice video on Youtube that you'd like to save it to your hard drive and keep if forever with you. And here comes the great question: how do you save Youtube videos?

The answer is UltraGet Video Downloader, an easy-to-use tool with which you can download online videos from Youtube and Google Video while you're watching them. Simply drag and drop the video URL from Firefox onto the program's interface (or copy it to the Clipboard) and the download process will start in a few seconds.

The one thing I really liked about UltraGet Video Downloader is its embedded FLV player that enables you to enjoy newly downloaded videos without having to install a third-party app. On the downside, the program requires to have a Youtube account in order to download videos and saves them in FLV format (wouldn't it be great to have them converted to AVI?).

With UltraGet Video Downloader you can save Youtube videos on your hard drive and watch them with the program's embedded player, though only in FLV format.

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This program aims to make downloading any video content from the net - whatever site it's on - as easy as possible. Of course, most people will use it for downloading videos. In order to download videos to your PC there are a number of specialized programs, such as Power Video Downloader. This program is notable for two things however: first, the ability to download from several pages - the second allows you to save the file in the format you choose.

Among the pages Power Video Downloader can download are from YouTube, Metacafe, Myspace and Google Video, but there are many more making this a powerful video downloding application. Simply copy the URL link of the video you want, select the format in which you want to download (AVI, WMV, MP4, MOV, etc..), and you're ready to go.

A flexible and powerful downloader that should fit all your video needs from any site.

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We all love browsing Youtube and watching videos, but sometimes we'd also like to be able to download them to our computers so that we can keep them for future reference, even if they're deleted from Youtube.

With Youtube Donwload & Convert you can easily download any video from this popular website, just by copying and pasting the video URL into the program's interface. What's more, Youtube Donwload & Convert will save the video in any format you choose among AVI, MP3, MP4, MOV, MPEG, WMV, 3GP or the native Flash FLV format.

On the downside, the program can take ages to download and convert the video, depending on the file's size. But at least results are good.

If you want to save and convert Youtube videos in an easy way, this is the app you're looking for.

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It's a brave claim to say that your program can download video from any YouTube style website but for the most part, Internet Video Converter succeeds. The few times it would not download videos seemed to be more to do with problems with the website than the program itself.

However, as far as video downloaders go, this is not exactly one of most straightforward ones. The main interface consists of no less than 5 tabs which all relate to advanced options for downloading and converting videos. You have so many options and parameters available that its easy to lose patience. In addition, after entering the address of the video and downloading it, you have to change the file extension to FLV to view it which is pretty poor.

However, these factors aside, it's main appeal is in its flexibility and ability to download from almost any site.

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Anything that has something in common with VLC player is OK by me and SmoothTube uses the same codec libraries as Videolan's VLC player so I knew it was going to be a pretty effective application. The developers claim that it works as a front-end program to VLC's transcoding options, requiring no knowledge of their syntax or inner workings. However, if you're not a VLC Player fan, the good news is that you don't need VLC player installed to use SmoothTube.

That said, Visual Basic 6 and a full installation of VLC are required to build the source both of which are available on the developer site. In a nutshell, SmoothTube downloads videos from the Internet in the quality of your choosing - high, medium or low. All videos are stored automatically in the "My Videos" folder and are saved in MPEG format since this is recognised by the widest number of media players. One other nice little feature is that it is also able to smooth out some of the compression problems associated with downloaded videos which increases the quality of the download considerably.

This is a simple tool that gives you the unique option of choosing in what quality you want to download a clip. It's just a shame that it does not save in other formats too.

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Since YouTube became the greatest TV channel ever invented, there have been dozens of downloaders released that help you grab videos and save them to your hard disk. Few, however, can be as simple as Cool YouTube Video Downloader. This program installs an icon in your Windows taskbar to download clips from YouTube and other popular online video destinations.

Once you stumble across a movie that you like, you simply need to double-click on the icon and paste the link into the box provided. Cool YouTube Downloader will then save the file to a pre-specified directory, even displaying a little chart of the transfer speeds during the download. It includes a one-click shortcut to your download library plus direct links to YouTube, MetaCafe, PornoTube and Yuvutu.

It seems that advanced options and extra features have been sacrificed to make Cool YouTube Downloader so simple to use. This means that there's no search tool or a facility for converting downloaded files from FLV format.

However, if you're looking for a quick and unobtrusive tool for grabbing YouTube clips on the fly then you won't go far wrong with this one.

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There are now several YouTube downloaders out there but TVP YouTube Video Downloader is one of the simplest and most user friendly. Best of all, you can download several videos at the same time so there's no hanging around.

It works via a simple navigator which directly opens the YouTube homepage where you start your video search. Next, you enter the reference number of the video you want to download in a box and simply click "download".

The big advantage of TVP YouTube Video Downloader is the possibility to simultaneously download multiple videos within just one window. With YouTube increasingly removing copyrighted or commercial material, this is a great way to ensure that all your favourite clips are saved forever on your hard drive.

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