Instant Media

The vendor has gone out of business, and this file is no longer offered. For a similar program, please visit PC World's review of Miro.

Ever wish you could get RSS feeds of your favorite Internet shows? Instant Media's free service offers more than 350 content channels, each of which you can download to your PC and watch on the free viewer. The easy-to-use interface offers a variety of podcasts and videocasts; just choose the ones you like, and new segments will automatically download to your PC when they're released.

Instant Media claims to be the first company to offer high-definition video to consumer desktop and notebook PCs. The company--which styles itself "I'M" for short--uses the new iHD format, which offers 1280-by-720 resolution, a 2 megabits-per-second data rate, and 192 kilobits-per-second audio. First up in iHD: Buy.com's new BuyTV and Internet news broadcast RocketBoom.

--Laura Blackwell