One of the possibilities internet offer us with the improvement in the connectivity is the possibility of accessing all kinds of multimedia content almost simultaneously with its official launch. This way, we can watch the latest Hollywood premiere online, even before it´s released in the cinema. However, online streaming services, either for being free or has a basic infrastructure or because sometimes are overloaded with users, they do not usually provide the necessary fluidity to watch free movies from our PC.

Watch online movies for free thanks to the internet

The solution is to download the movies to our pc, once these are saved on the hard disk, we will be able to watch them without cuts. To do so, we need to find on the web, sites where films are available and use a program such as uTorrent, if this is under P2P protocol, or a download manager like Internet Download Manager or jDownloader, if this is in a “direct download “.

Once we´ve downloaded with the help of some of these applications, we have to play them on our PC. There are many media players, all them quite effective, among the most popular we can mention Windows Media Player, VLC or RealPlayer. However, it is possible that even if we have a good player we cannot watch free movies uncut as we wanted since we do not have the necessary codec’s to do so. Some of the most complete codec packs that will avoid any difficulties are Elisoft Codec Pack or CCCP

This way, by having these tools, we can finally seat comfortably in our couch and watch our favorite movie without cuts.

Search, play, download and convert audio and video with Miro

Miro is an excellent application that in times where more and more multimedia content is uploaded on the net and many portable devices are launched day after day, the utility that this application offers is incredible. With a built-in browser engine, a multi-page searcher, a TV player and a converter, Miro is one of the most complete programs.

When we run the program we find on the left panel a number of options that allow us to access the different resources Miro has. It has its own guide and an application as well as a series of pages that we can set up as we want.

On “Web Sites” section we will see the sites we can have quick access from Miro, and from where we can download. So in a practical way we can download videos from YouTube as from the main streaming online sites.

At the same time, Miro allows you to create playlists based on online content as well as audio or video files that you previously stored on your computer.

Without doubt, one of the most interesting utilities Miro offers is the converter. With this exciting tool we can make conversions based on the most popular format profiles taking as reference the device we use. This way, we don´t need to worry about format compatibility problems, as well as the ideal size for our laptop.

As we can see, Miro is a very complete program that allows us to get the best of the web easily. Whether we want to view multimedia content, download it or convert it to take it everywhere on portable devices, Miro is an application that will give us practical solutions.

How to play Snake while you load videos in YouTube

A new functionality in YouTube player has been recently discovered. It enables us to play Snake in the player display while w are loading or playing a video.

With our keyboard we can show our skills and feed the snake to make it grow while we avoid the boring wait, if we have a slow connection.

This option available in YouTube, which doesn’t have a useful purpose in itself, has never been announced and remained hidden in the player until some user discovered it. It is not available for any video, so if we want to try it out we must search within the “Gaming” category. One link we can use to enable this option is: http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=f8eVGuKicv8&

To use the game we must press up and left arrow keys while clicking the play or pause button in You Tube’s player. The circle will turn into the snake so that you can start playing.

This is a useless, though amusing, feature in YouTube, just like the vuvuzelas in 2010 World Cup South Africa, but it will definitely help us to kill time.

Windows Media Player: the popular multimedia player from Microsoft

It is impossible to talk about multimedia players without making reference to the traditional Windows Media Player, an application that has become very popular between millions of users.

Despite the great variety of multimedia player the market offers nowadays, there are only few which can fulfill the user’s requirements. A good example of this is the player that Microsoft offers for its operating systems, Windows Media Player 11.

This software is very similar to the previous ones but offer new innovations and improvements. The classic menu of the software has been changed and now we can enable or disable it with just one click; like the task bar, which offer different new options such as: Now playing, Library, Copy from CD and Record and synchronize. In addition to this, the browser has also been improved, adding universal buttons like “previous” and “next”.

Regarding multimedia files, the software offers support for different formats and a central place to manage it, the “Library”. This has been designed to automatically group the albums by features as genre, artist, year, etc.; it also offers a new music searcher that allows finding any audio track that is in your computer by writing a key word; what´s more, it is able to create audio tracks lists, according to its maximum qualification, automatically.

This player also includes options for the images, videos and recorded TV that simplify their storage and search. In “Copying” and “Recording”, we will be able to rip and burn the tracks.

We have two options left to talk about, “Synchronize” the player with portable devices, and also accessing music stores. Regarding the first one, we can say that this is one of the greatest innovations of this version that stands out due to the support and compatibility that offers so that the exploration and managing of files that are in the player or iPod can be synchronized automatically.

The main disadvantage of this software is those consumes many resources and slow down its functionality. We will see this frequently if we add many elements to the Library. Another disadvantage is presents are the codec’s since it does not have many of them and we will need to download form the Internet frequently.

In spite of this, we are without a doubt before one of the most complete tools when reproducing audio and video files.

VLC media player -an open-source application- from the VideoLAN project, has finally reached version and it´s called “Goldeneye”. After the success of version 0.9.9 reaching thousands of downloads within months, VLC developers wanted to create a multimedia player for Windows and Mac OSX. VLC 1.0.0 allows users to play any audio and video file. This major release introduces many new features, new formats and new codecs to the VLC multimedia framework and fixes a very high number of bugs that were present in the older versions.

VLC Media Player 1.0 finally released

What´s best about VLC is it´s live streaming feature to listen to radios or play videos, watch TV shows, football matches and more, just by connecting to the internet. You can also set up VLC to stream media from a file or from a DVD as a server, and then another client can stream that media, without having to encode the file first. Additionally, it can repair video files with corrupted headers,

Goldeneye added an easier encoding graphical user interface in the Qt version, new artwork, made the toolbars customizable and as always, it´s cross-platform and open source.

Version 1.0 features several interface improvements making it even more user-friendly than before. It adds playback features such as:

• Playback support for zipped files.
• Support for some HD streams.
• Added new HD (High-Definition) codecs, such as: Blu-Ray Linear PCM; Dolby Digital Plus; AES3; TrueHD and Real Video 3.0 and 4.0.
• Support for Frame-by-Frame
• Live recording support

VLC 1.0 Goldeneye is without a doubt one of the best current multimedia players. Millions around the world have downloaded it and it they proved for themselves that it´s the best fully-featured multimedia player.

Download VLC for Windows

Download VLC for MAC

Aren´t you bored of the same old desktop background images? You can finally get rid of them! With VLC media player you can set your favorites videos… as desktop background wallpapers! We will now show the procedure to make it happen.

After installing VLC media player and the program is launched, open a video file. In the next step, select the menu bar found on the upper side of the program and chooses “Options” and from the dropdown menu selects “preference”. A new window will be displayed with multiple options to set all the aspect of this application. In this case we will focus on one, located on the left where we will find a menu with many variants. There we will need to select the option “video” and we will see how the options change.

As you can see, in the left there is another menu. Choose “video” and then you will see the following window:

In this window perform the necessary changes. You must ensure that “Advanced Options” -found on the bottom left of the window- is enabled. This is necessary since the program come by default programmed to show the simplest options for beginner users only, if you want to try advance options, you need to enable it. Now check that “Enable Video”, the first option of the menu, is selected. Once we completed those steps, click on “Save” to save changes.

Once we play the video, right-click on the window and the next menu dropdown will be displayed:

In this menu enable the option “Desktop Background”. Now, check that the video selected in the program is being played on your desktop.

As we can see, changing the desktop background Wallpaper is simple as making a few clicks and selecting this variant in VLC media player ; in other words, it´s easier than you thought. Once you choose the video, you need to enable an action inside the setting panel of the program and automatically we will see it in our desktop. For those looking for a change in their desktop background, give this trick a try, your desktop will not regret it.

Download VLC media player

It´s common nowadays to have issues when transferring music files from our PC to our iPod. To make thing easier, we´ll need an application such as iTunes that will enable users to transfer multimedia files easily and quickly. Therefore, we introduce you to iTunes, a multimedia player that will enable you to copy music to your iPod with just a few clicks.

IPods are the most popular portable multimedia devices due to the handful of interesting features they deliver. However, when we plug our iPod to the PC we run into some complications, we cannot copy files using Windows Explorer as we would usually do for instance.

The solution is installing an application that features the necessary support for your iPod device so you can use it properly with your PC. That application is iTunes, Apple´s most popular application, designed to transfer music, videos and photos to the device. Once we downloaded the file and installed iTunes, connect your iPod to the PC.

First, we must add songs to the “Library” in the music tab. Once music files are there we can work with them or just play them. There are two of ways of adding tracks. You can either add tracks by dragging files of folders to the music tab, or by going to File > Add File/Folder to Library.

When having lots of audio tracks in our library, the next is to create Playlists. We can do it either by clicking on File > New Playlist Folder or by clicking on the + button found on the lower left portion of the screen. Once the Playlist is created we can rename it and drag and drop the songs we want to include in such playlist.

You can also use iTunes Music Store to buy songs or albums. iTunes Music Store has more music titles and genres available than any other music service we’ve seen. The service also offers a strong feature set, including an integrated music player, in-depth information on artists and albums, music videos, audio books, movies, television shows and games.

When you have finally organized your playlist, you can either drag and drop separate songs or the entire playlist to your iPod player. The process may take some minutes depending on the number of songs you are copying to the player.

Even though iTunes may not seem very user-friendly at the beginning, you will realize that adding music to our iPod can be done in a matter of seconds.

Following these simple steps, you´ll be able to load music into your iPod in no time. Its interface may seem a bit confusing at the beginning, but it´s very easy to master and it´s the essential complement for your iPod player.

Dowload iTunes