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Veoh lets you upload a range of video formats with no limits on file size, resolution, or length, but if your video is over 45 minutes, a viewer will need to download it to watch the whole thing.
To download (not just watch) videos, they must use the VeohTV desktop application. VeohTV is also what you'll be using to upload videos over 100MB, but you can also upload videos directly from a URL (say, an FTP somewhere), or if you've got a free Veoh Pro account, via an automatic RSS feed.
A Veoh Pro account requires--though it doesn't bill--a credit card account number to confirm your address. When that's given, you can then take advantage of advertising programs where you can share revenue 50/50 and sell or rent video downloads through Veoh's e-commerce system (you keep 70 percent of the sale price). As a Veoh Pro account holder, your uploaded video will be transcoded into Flash 8 video, an improvement over the Flash 7 format used for converting video submitted by basic users.
Uploading to Veoh took about 5 minutes, and our video was live about 10 minutes later. The large (540 by 405 pixels) embedded player is unobtrusive, and featured an option to download videos to the VeohTV desktop software. A sort of TiVo for Internet TV, VeohTV has a single interface to search, browse, and view all video on the Internet, from major television networks such as Fox and CBS, to independently produced content available on sites such as YouTube, Google Video, Veoh.com, and MySpace.
As we've previously noted, Veoh appears to be mixing several different Internet TV models--providing search capabilities to find free content all over the Web (as Google Video does), offering licensed content from partners (as Joost does), and letting users upload any video they like and opt in to revenue sharing.
VeohTV has more DVR features than its rivals--you can tell it to "record" (download) something and then watch the download later. Veoh also claims to have a patented "smart recommendation engine" to help you scour the Web for something to watch.
Bottom line: Veoh impressed with a large and easy-to-use embedded player and its useful VeohTV desktop software.
Resources: See our Top 10 Video Sharing Sites chart, find out how we tested, and visit our video-quality comparison page (requires QuickTime).
Danny Allen
