I watch my share of online video and my video streaming site of choice isn’t YouTube. I don’t care much for videos produced by people with the cheapest cameras they can get their hands on. I prefer full length professionally made TV shows and movies like Hulu provides.

Nielsen Online has released its latest figures for video streaming sites and YouTube still sits in the top spot with a massive lead over the second place site. In April YouTube streamed 5.5 billion videos with Hulu coming in a distant second place.

The cable company that serves my neighborhood sucks. They have about only a few HD channels and didn’t have DVR’s until last year. The company is totally stuck in the early 2000’s. I opted to go with DirecTV instead of cable or Dish Network because DirecTV had more HD offerings at the time.

DirecTV launched a new app for the iPhone not too long ago that allows you to access your DVR, even if it’s not connected to the Internet, and schedule recordings. Dish Network has announced that it is now offering a service called Remote Access that allows users of Dish Network DVRs to access their DVR and record programs from any computer in the world.

Flip video recently teamed up MTV and gave away 100 of these little Flip camcorders to 100 college students around the country and asked them to create footage based on different themes provided by MTV. They then uploaded these videos, along with many others to MTV’s What The Flip? site.

Anyone can get in on the action and upload their own videos based on the different themes, including “Worst Date”, “Last Dream”, “Bridges, Rhinos, Chandeliers”, and “If I Could Change 1 Thing About The World” to name a few. MTV and Flip Video are also giving one of these Flip Mino camcorders away each day by registering at the What the Flip? website (see the bottom of the About page).

To help spread the word, SlipperyBrick.com is also giving away a Flip Mino camcorder that have a good chance at …

Here’s the first geotagging video camera in the world from Geotate, an auto geotagging company and DXG Technology Corp. Both companies have teamed up to develop the geo-enabled video camera based on DXG’s DVH586 platform, running on the Yuma geotagging software. It’s aimed squarely at the “YouTube” generation.

The device makes it possible to share boring details of your travels with pinpoint accuracy, so that everyone knows exactly where you’ve been. Images are automatically tagged in milliseconds without running the battery down too much and you don’t even need for a phone signal.

I am a big time DVR fan; I don’t know what I did before I had DVRs on each TV in the house. Before the DVR, I actually had to watch commercials. If my wife wanted to watch something that really sucked, like one of those wedding shows, I missed something good (like anything not a wedding show).

Thankfully, the DVR saved me from having to program my VCR and enduring crap TV and commercials. According to a survey from NDS, 7 out of 10 people who own a DVR, say they can’t live without it. The survey also shows that 89% of Americans say that a DVR makes for a happier home life. I agree with that, the other guys out there don’t like wedding shows either I am betting.

Netflix has officially confirmed rumors that they are indeed looking into streaming video content through Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console. Spokesman Steve Swasey did not confirm that Netflix and Microsoft have any partnership currently in the works, but Netflix has started surveying existing customers to gauge their interest in a new, additional offering through the game console.

Netflix’ business model has traditionally been to provide a subscription of physical DVDs that are shipped to customer’s homes, but has been working diligently to keep up with new technologies and customer demands for streaming video. The company created a partnership with LG earlier this year for a set top box to stream video content into its customers living rooms, and last year started offering online video through computers which recently increased to unlimited content for $17 per month subscribers.

Vudu is making some moves to keep in strong competition with the yet-to-be-released second version of AppleTV, this time offering a software update and more high-def content. This software update to version 1.2 comes not much more than a week after Vudu gave their system a 25 percent price cut bringing it down to $295 and closer to AppleTV’s $229. AppleTV had recently announced the “take 2″ version will add on features that will allow users to download video content to the appliance without the need of a computer in between, which is a feature that Vudu possessed and AppleTV did not.

The recent software upgrade for the Vudu video system brings some new features to improve user experiences with choosing videos to download. A new indicator will evaluate the current broadband speed and indicate if the selected video will download and show well without any skips or extended delays. When searching for a video it can also recommend titles for instant start based on the connection speed.

It just keeps getting better for consumers looking for on-demand set top boxes. In response to the new firmware upgrade and price drop announced by Jobs for the Apple TV, Vudu has given its own demand box a 25 percent discount. This brings the price of the Vudu system down to $295 from $399.

Apple recently discounted the Apple TV with prices as low as $229 for the 40GB model and they’ve also are scheduled to move into a space where Vudu had an upper hand - movie downloads without a PC. Apple TV not only is going to match that point of service but can also bring in YouTube videos AND content from your computer into your living room, which Vudu cannot.

Starting Tuesday Time Warner’s HBO will begin HBO On Broadband, a trial of a new online video download service bringing HBO content to subscribers’ computers much like HBO On Demand does but with much more content. The new service will offer 400 hours of video content including 130 movie titles that can all be downloaded and viewed through a computer.

Before you get too excited about getting the Sapranos downloaded you’ll want to note that this is starting out as a limited area trial and has some requirements. The HBO On Broadband service will initial launch only in the Wisconsin areas of Green Bay and Milwaukee with plans of expanding to other areas at a later time. Those residing in the eligible areas must also be subscribers to HBO’s pay-cable network and must use their cable company as their internet provider, making the bundled services from the cable providers a more attractive prospect. The service is also limited to Windows systems.

Amidst the new product announcements unveiled during the MacWorld 2008 keynote today Jobs slipped in a message about a new feature that will easily get your DVD content into your iTunes or Windows Media Player library called Digital Copy. Partnering with Twentieth Century Fox, Apple is offering the Digital Copy feature on DVDs from the Fox studio starting with “Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest” which releases today.

Anytime someone purchases a DVD from Fox that has the Digital Copy feature they can insert the disc into their computer, enter a unique code and transfer the movie into iTunes or Windows Media Player. The movie will then be available for unlimited viewing on their computer, iPod with video, iPhone, Apple TV or other video media player. There is of course some restriction on your purchased DVD’s Digital Copy feature however. It will transfer the DVD to only one instance of iTunes, limited by the unique code required.

Apple announced the immediate launch of iTunes Movie Rentals today during the MacWorld 2008 keynote speech, allowing iTunes users to get limited-time download of movies from any of the major studios for as little as $2.99. The new service is part of iTunes version 7.6 which is available now and gives a rental download of movies for 30 days, but once you begin watching the movie the rental will run out in 24 hours. It can be watched as many times as you would like within that time. You can even start watching on your computer and then transfer the video to your iPod and finish watching the movie on the go.

Apple appears to have picked up all the major studios with this offer with the list of participants including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. iTunes plans to have over 1,000 titles available by the end of February with rates of $2.99 for regular titles and $3.99 for new releases. For another dollar iTunes will deliver titles in high-def with Dolby 5.1 surround.

Netflix online movie rental service is showing that they are not going to be left behind as online digital video content continues to evolve with an announcement on Monday that they are offering unlimited streaming videos to their unlimited rental customers. Subscribers with a minimum $8.99 per month account can take advantage of more than 90,000 DVD titles streamed to their PC for no additional cost and no limit.

Netflix shook up the video rental industry when it launched back in 1998 as the first internet store to offer DVD rentals which had a flat monthly fee and only limited by the number of videos a customer could possess at a time. This new offer extends the unlimited video content to customer’s PCs, which was previously limited to an hour of content per month for each dollar spent on a monthly subscription through the Watch Now program. Lower, $4.99 per month subscribers can get still get two hours of streaming video per month with the new offer.

Pinnacle Systems has a pretty cool little device debuting at the Consumer Electronics Show this year called the Pinnacle Video Transfer. The Video Transfer allows users to connect analog video input and record it straight to different USB 2.0 compatible media players such as an iPod, PSP or just to a regular USB flash drive. It takes connections from a number of video inputs such as S-Video, Composite video and stereo audio analog from devices like a television, DVD player or camcorder. From there it converts it up to 720×480 H.264 MPEG-4 files on the USB device, ready for playing. Different recording qualities can be set depending on the quality desired and the size of the display needed so you can save some space by recording small for a small screen. It can even be used to charge up some devices while connected.

According to the Financial Times, Apple is finally getting ready to announce a deal with Twentieth Century Fox to offer Fox movies available for download through iTunes. The service would allow users to download Fox movies as a temporary digital “rental”. According to the source Fox is also working out a feature on their physical DVD movies that would let DVD owners temporarily transfer the movie content from the DVD to a digital player like an iPod or a computer using Apple’s DRM.

This is something that Apple has been trying to get going for a while but has met some resistance with most studios, likely for fear of losing sales due to a higher piracy rate of movies and lower costs of ownership. Another issue is the threat that this poses to video on demand services from places such as Comcast and DirectTV. Apple currently sells some movie titles on iTunes from Disney and Viacom but has not had as much luck getting the ball rolling with video as it has with online music purchases, which more that likely has led to a rental offering.

Black boxes have proven to be useful after accidents in planes and have been becoming more popular for use in personal automobiles as well. Not only can they help determine the cause of an accident but insurance companies can potentially use them to determine the driving habits of its customers, which isn’t always a popular prospect for consumers.

Apparently having a data recorder in your car that keeps track of movement and speed just isn’t enough these days. According to Yahoo Korea HK e-Car, Korean maker of black boxes for vehicle in Korea, they have new product in their MOA line of black boxes called the MOA-VBOX which will incorporate video into the mix of data recorded from an accident.