Watching videos has now become rather easy because of the large number of online video streaming services available. The good thing is that you can watch video clips about every topic on these video streaming services. If you have a video that you want to share then you can easily publish your video to these websites. Of course, these video streaming websites give a lot of convenience, but in order to enjoy videos from such websites, you require a good Internet connection that can speedily buffer the videos.
The Market Leaders
While there are a lot of online video streaming services on the internet, there are some factors that make some services more popular than the others. The factors that count are time available to you to watch, video quality and the number of videos available on the site. Let's have a look at some of the popular online video streaming websites:
• YouTube (free): YouTube is free to use, which is one of the numerous reasons why it is the most popular video streaming site. However, all the video clips have to be under 100MB. Video clips are published by users and the quality of videos differs since YouTube does not supervise the video quality. You will see lots of spam comments and spam video clips on YouTube due to the fact that it is a large scale website and they cannot directly monitor every comment and video.
• MySpace (free): Recently, MySpace, which is very popular as a social networking site permitted its users to share videos on their profiles. The majority of the users on MySpace upload their personal clips, which is why the quality of videos is mostly low on MySpace. It is a great website to share personal video clips without having to pay anything.
• Vimeo (free, pay for upgrades): Vimeo is famous for good quality videos. Members have the option to upgrade their account by paying, however, the site is free to use for the basic members. This website is mostly used by artists and animators and the interface of the website is rather trendy and attractive. There is a weekly upload limit for the free members of 500MB.
• Metacafe (free): Metacafe has been operating as online video streaming service longer than YouTube, but YouTube is more popular among the two. Most of the video clips on Metacafe are not appropriate for younger audience. Aside from an easy to use interface, the website also offers good quality interesting video clips. Metacafe is directed more towards the adult audience.
• Hulu (free, pay for upgrades): The best website for watching TV programs online, Hulu has gained a lot of reputation in the past few years. There is a large number of TV programs offered on this website among other videos. A paid membership is required to watch all the videos on the website. However, you can watch a few videos with the free membership. A wide selection of movies is also available on Hulu. The bad thing about Hulu is that it is only offered to the people in United States.
Worth the Expense of Upgrades?
The ability to watch a number of video clips on different topics is widely appreciated by the Internet audience. It is less costly to use any of the above service as compared to watching TV programs via TV providers. The quality of video definitely depends on the website you choose and the quality of your equipment. You can watch video clips on your iPhone, iPad or some other portable device using just an Internet connection with online video streaming, which is a great benefit of using this service.
If you're planning on just viewing and sharing personal video clips, then you do not have upgrade your account on any of the above services. However, the value of these video streaming websites is great for those who travel quite a lot.
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