Finding Online Video

Sure, the Web may one day become the repository of all human knowledge. More important, though, is that it may also turn into the ultimate TiVo. Before long, you might be able to watch any show ever recorded with just a few simple mouse clicks.

AOL, CBS, CNN, Yahoo, and many others are already flooding the Net with video. The trouble? As with regular old TV, the challenge is to find stuff worth viewing.

I started my hunt by visiting Google's and Yahoo's new video search engines. Unfortunately, neither one is quite ready for prime time.

Google's beta video search indexes clips based on their closed-captioned text. So a search for episodes of The Simpsons turns up any clip that mentions "the Simpsons" (many featuring morally righteous types trashing the program on C-SPAN). When you find an actual Simpsons episode, you can't watch it because Google doesn't have the right to rebroadcast it. But you can use Google's downloadable viewer to watch homemade or public-domain material, like footage of the always-thrilling Milpitas City Planning Commission.

Yahoo's video search is a bit friendlier than Google's, and produced more bona fide hits when I used it. But most clips I tried to play no longer existed--possibly because they'd been pulled off by the copyright police. As with the Google search, I had better luck with home movies and video blogs (or "vlogs").

A slightly better option is Blinkx.tv, which pulls brief clips from well-known sources such as the BBC and HBO, along with podcasts from various sources and vlogs from Mefeedia. You can tell Blinkx.tv to search for videos and stash them in a folder on your desktop or feed them to your RSS reader. But no matter what I searched for, most of my hits came from C-SPAN--likely because there's a ton of C-SPAN content online. Playback via RealPlayer or Windows Media Player was hit-and-miss, depending on the source of the feed.

A Few Good Sites

While video search will get better over time, the best way to find stuff worth watching today is by tuning in to various niche Web sites. Here are a few of my favorites.

You say you never got to see Jon Stewart dress down Tucker Carlson on Crossfire? You'll find that clip at IFilm, along with movie previews, news reports, and parodies. Some material is R-rated, but it's all 100 percent legal--and free. AtomFilms is also chock-full of short free films worth seeing (well, most of them). Note that both sites make you watch short ads before showing you the goods.

Feeling reckless and hormonal? Surf over to TotalVid,where you can download videos about paintball, motorcycles, snowboarding, anime, and more for $2 to $4 a pop. I downloaded one titled Questionable Tendencies ("Find out what happens when you mix drunken idiots with gasoline, explosives, and too much horsepower!"). It's unlikely to win any Emmys, but I have never felt so good about being old. That's worth four bucks.

If you're fascinated by all things digital, you'll probably like NerdTV--a 13-part series hosted by Robert X. Cringely that's available as a free download from PBS. Of course, you can also view clips of PC World's Digital Duo for free.

Video on the Web will get really interesting as more people offer their own feeds alongside cable and broadcast fare. Who knows? Maybe one day you'll be able to choose between The Daily Show and The Dan Show (the adventures of a grumpy, middle-aged tech columnist). Meanwhile, Web video is mostly 5 million channels of not much on--and way too much C-SPAN.