TubeTV: YouTube and Google Video for your iTunes Library

You’re going to waste a lot of time with this one.

TubeTV, a newly-released piece of freeware from Chimoosoft, allows you to search for, download and convert video from Google Video and YouTube for permanent enjoyment in iTunes and, from there, your iPhone, iPod or AppleTV. Yes, you can already search and enjoy some video content from YouTube on two of these devices, but TubeTV lets you get all of it, at your leisure, downloaded permanently for your enjoyment.

The software is pretty simple. The single-window interface features a built-in search bar which allows you to search Google Video or YouTube and a main area which displays your search results. When you see a video you want to save, simply hit the appropriate button in the upper-right corner to save the flash video to your desktop where it is then trans-coded to a format that you can play in QuickTime. Or, if you prefer, you can use the application’s settings to set things up to save in a format especially for the iPod, tv or iPhone.

Now, it’s true that you can already see this sort of thing on the AppleTV and the iPhone, but both have to be connected to the internet to work properly and download time is required. With TubeTV, you only need to download the file once and you can then enjoy it, on all of your devices, over and over. Also, if you have an older Mac that stutters when you try to watch online videos, TubeTV allows you to enjoy them skip-free.

TubeTV requires Perian, a QuickTime component which we’ve covered here before, and will automatically download and install it for you if you haven’t already. It is a Universal Binary and requires OS 10.4 or later. You can download it for free from Chimoosoft’s site, though they accept donations, and you’ll be downloading and enjoying video in just minutes. There are other applications with some (or all) of TubeTV’s features, but none that do it so well for such a great price (it’s hard to beat free!).