Webupon

Let’s be candid here. Why do we visit video websites in the first place? Well, some of us want to watch programs and movies that we can’t normally get through our local cable or satellite service. Others just don’t want to waste money at Blockbuster or at the movie theater. Whatever our reason might be, it’s becoming easier and easier to download free episodes of the latest television series and programs.

Free Download Manager is a brand new freeware program that lets you download flash videos from popular sites such as MegaVideo and YouTube. All you need to do is get the program for free off of their main website. Once installed, simply insert the URL of the YouTube or MegaVideo page where the video you want is located. For YouTube videos, each 10-minute segment is approximately 21.7 MB in length.

The disadvantage to using Free Download Manager is that flash videos from YouTube do not have resume support, should your internet connection disconnect in the middle of downloading. However, the same problem applies when loading flash videos directly on the YouTube site itself and saving them to RAM, so it’s a disadvantage that has yet to be solved in either situation.

The program also allows you to convert any downloaded flash videos (FLV) to AVI, MPEG, MP4 (for i-Pods and other portable media devices) and even WMV (for watching videos in Windows Media Player). The most common conversion method for desktop computers is from FLV to WMV, though keep in mind the size differential can be a bit of a problem. A 21.7 MB FLV can easily convert into a 51 MB WMV for Media Player. Nevertheless, if you have a large hard drive, WMV is the way to go – either that, or burn the videos to a DVD for storage.

Of course, this does mean that production companies will have a harder time selling their television series and movies. Why buy a DVD of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” when you can download it for free and save a copy on your hard drive for future viewing? And unlike VHS where you can’t automatically jump to a certain scene, and DVD where if the disc is scratched, it skips, as long as you have a sufficient amount of RAM in your computer, you won’t have to deal with either of these problems.

Free online television programs and movies. It definitely doesn’t get better than this. Well, it will, once someone invents holographic technology. But until that point in time, I think we’ll have to make due with what we have.