Veoh labels itself an "internet television network." They may be selling themselves short.
On the one hand, Veoh offers a bevy of high-quality, legal content, most of which is under the "TV Shows" tab. They carry full episodes and clips from several major networks, but also from many more obscure channels and even dozens of web series. Since its creation, Veoh has vastly expanded its partnerships to give it a wide array of mainstream and independent content (including some clips in HD), so if you're looking for something that interests you, you'll find it without much fuss.
But Veoh does something very different from television. Veoh also has user-generated content, even pulling video from YouTube into its "videos" library. On the one hand, this makes Veoh a very rich experience; on the other hand, even with flexible search options and a "family filter" to help users find what they want, you might still have to sift a bit to find exactly what you want within the videos section.
Combining these two models on one site makes Veoh more of a wide-ranging, on-demand service than a television network. And Veoh exploits that fact with VeohTV (still in open beta), which not only takes the service to a full-screen out-of-browser experience, but expands on it with several useful features.
- VeohTV allows you to store videos offline for later viewing, like a DVR, and create playlists if you like.
- If you have S-video ports on your computer and TV set, you can bring VeohTV's broadcast quality service to your living room.
- If you're away from your personal computer, you can use the Home Delivery feature from any other computer to browse for videos and "send" them to your home computer for download.
- Veoh and VeohTV don't rest entirely on direct content delivery. Like a number of other sites we will be reviewing, they make something more out of the experience by tying it all together with a personal profile and a social network. Having a profile allows the user to subscribe to various shows, channels and publishers, and it also empowers Veoh to make recommendations based on preferences, which are revealed by viewing habits and honed by the ratings system. For the water-cooler aspect of TV culture, users can customize their profiles (limited though they may be), add widgets, find friends, and even keep up with what their friends are watching or see how friends rate the things they watch.
Veoh is uniquely able to broadcast lengthy, broadcast-quality video because it is partly powered by a proprietary person-to-person (P2P) distribution network, showing that P2P can be secure, safe and legitimate. Ambitious, innovative sites like Veoh are making the online experience better for both users and artists.
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