This streaming media site is by far the most widely used of the 3 researched. Youtube allows users access to many different types of videos and provides a list of popular videos, videos being watched at that time, and recommends videos to the user based on which types of videos the user has already viewed in the past. At times there may be advertisements that come on before the video actually plays but this doesnt happen that often, also there are not any ads posted on the space around where the video is played which gives a much better feeling about the overall content of the site and its videos. Some other great features with youtube is how easy it is to save, share and embed videos to other networking sites. for instance, when you choose to share a video youtube gives you the option to send it to several different commonly used sites such as facebook, blogger, and twitter. this makes sharing videos much easier than searching the web to find videos to share. Another great feature about youtube is how easy it is to read and post comments and rate the videos you watch. being able to see others opinion on certain videos gives a much clearer understanding on how the content is regarded by a large and diverse group of people based on their own responses. Youtube uses a version of adobe flash player whenever you view any of their videos although I dont know what kinds of problems would arise with someone trying to save a video to their own computer who does not have adobe on their system.
Here is an example of a video from the Youtube website.
Hulu
This is another online streaming media source but unlike youtube or any of the others it is much more limited in the scope of the videos it chooses to upload. Hulu is more of a site for people who are wanting to view TV shows, Movies, Trailers, and popular series. It also uses adobe flash player 10 as its media player. its format is very similar to youtube in the sense of everything being very easy to share and embed to different sites and Hulu also has an autoplay feature which whenever a video finishes playing the next one in the line begins playing. you can also write a review of a movie clip and rate it as with youtube and their is a list of similar clips on the videos page but there is not really a recommended for you section on Hulu besides that of what is popular to the majority of people on the site.
Here is an example of a movie trailer clip from Hulu.
Joost
This site had a very small selection of videos and was very similar to Hulu in the sense that all the videos were related to movies and TV shows. however Joost also had a selection of music videos availible on their site which is something I did not see on Hulu. But despite this the overall selection is quite limited compared to Hulu and Youtube. Also, there was a larger amount of ads on the site and its setup was much more difficult to navigate as compared to the other sites. There was also a big degree of commercials that were up to 30 seconds long that would play before the video. This site also uses adobe flash player 10 and being able to share videos is still relatively easy to do but it is a bit more difficult to navigate where everything is such as embed buttons and sharing options. The overall setup of the site is very lengthy in how many videos are posted in related topics but the selection of videos is more on the side of news and movie commentary and gossip.
Here is an example of some of the content availible on Joost.
This site is dedicated to Anime movies, series, and Manga of all different sorts. It is much more difficult to navigate than the other streaming media sites and has little to offer for anyone not interested in Anime or other Japanese cartoons. There isn't any variety in the site besides Anime and Manga and all of the videos are whole episodes rather than clips of different sorts. But for someone interested in Anime then this site is a very good source of information however the way it is set up can still be very confusing since there are many ads, an active chat box, and many different links. I also noticed that some shows had been removed from the site due to copyright laws.
This site is very similar to Hulu in the sense that it offers many different types of videos but the central theme is still directed to movies and TV shows. The overall setup of the site was very simple and easy to navigate. Although there were some differences from other sites I found no trouble being able to share and embed videos. there was also not any ads that came up on this site and whenever you watched a particular episode of a show on Fancast there would be a list of other episodes from the same show below the video. This site also uses adobe to run its videos.
Here is an example of a Video from Fancast.
Overall I visited all Five of these sites using Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. I found that all sites function well on any of these platforms but out of all five choices I would have to say that Youtube still offers the best selection, variety, and ease of use than any of the other sites used.
