In a previous post we showed how to get some fantastic free music for our Zune. In this post we will show you how to find free videos for Zune.

Wizzard.tv is a huge podcasting site. Apparently there were 1.2 billion podcast download requests from Wizzard in 2008 alone! If you go to their site you will see a link to “shows” in the top bar. Once you click that and are on the new page put your cursor over “Religion and Spirituality” to see the drop down menu. Select “TV & Film” and you will be taken to the page with “This months top TV and Film shows”.

Now, there are 9 videos to choose from (yes, only 9 - despite the category, most are audio!!). But, you ask, where are last months shows? or last years shows? How can we find them? Good question! We contacted Wizzard to ask just that - and they said:

Currently the only way to search the Wizzard.tv site is by category

Ha! Well, not to worry, we worked out how to find over 200 video producers (who then have anywhere from one to hundreds of videos available through Wizzard.tv) . Only interested in comedy shows? Or sport shows? We worked out how to find them as well. We like animation (though we did not find many of those) and so found this JoeCartoon video. .

But be warned - the Joecartoon show (above image) is a good example of where Wizzard is headed. In the last few weeks Wizzard have signed agreements with Sevenload ( Europe’s leading independent network that reaches 15 million users monthly) and with Attention Span Media LLC so that they can channel their podcasts to an even wider audience. Motive? To further “monetize” their traffic. That means that the ads that are inserted in to podcasts and video shows (hey, we are used to that, anyway) will earn even more money for the network and its podcasters.

The podcasts are still free but we do have to view ads as well!

So how do you find the shows? Just type [video site:www.wizzard.tv/shows2/] into your browser’s address bar (leave out the brackets).

We will cover more sophisticated searches in a later post when we plan to review some of the more interesting Wizzard videos. In the meantime - check them out. You will be pleasantly surprised by some (and disappointed in others - OK they aren’t all worth watching!)

Share

Want some more great free music? This time its not just a free trial (still, we reckon 25 free songs was worth getting!). But, with a small amount of time and by following our tutorial, you can begin downloading a whole stack of great music.

You can listen to this sample to get you motivated (yep, its an hour of great music - for free! - it takes a few secs to load, so be patient - its well worth it!)

Now, this may not be the kind of music that rocks your world (we got hooked after we covered the Latin Grammys last November) - but you can check out Wizzard to see if they have the music you like. If they do, you are going to have to come back here to find out how to get it onto your Zune (unless you are happy using iTunes - which we like to avoid)

But, before we go through that tutorial, we would like to show you how to find more Wizzard music than you can find from the above link. Just go to your Google browser and click the “advanced search” option. Then type Music into “all these words” and the wizzard.tv into “Search within a site or domain”. Then click the advanced search button. You now have over 400 results to look through - much more than is listed for “This month’s top music shows”!

OK - how to get this great music onto our Zune? Well, you can do it by using Juice! Its a great little tool that lets us download music onto our PC - and from there its an easy matter to load to our Zune. How to get Juice and download music to it is well explained elsewhere. You can get the URL feed for Ritmo Latino from here. Once you have downloaded the music you can find it in “my Received podcasts”:

Now all you have to do to is right click the file and select “Play with Zune”. (this will open the Zune player. You can then load the music to your Zune)

Share

Free videos can often be fairly amateurish - for obvious reasons (no cash inflow from sales!) So we were delighted to discover Wizzard Media where we can download lots of excellent videos to our Zune. 

Wizzard Media specializes in podcasts - or, in their words

Wizzard Media collectively broadcasts millions of podcast downloads per day through media aggregators like Apple's iTunes, Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace and other podcast aggregators.

Whilst most of their podcasts are audio, there are plenty of excellent videos to get excited about:

Keen on nature? National Geographic has a selection of short videos - and if we subscribe, we can automatically receive each new show as it arrives:

Been avoiding that long trip because it can be a trial with young kids? Check out wubcasts - the "worlds first video podcast for pre-schooolers" There are 20 episodes already available! And no need for expensive equipment - they can watch it on Zune,

In fact, there are video selections across a big range of topics from comedy to "science and medicine" and much in between. Guys: want to impress your new girlfriend by cooking her great meal at her place - but don't actually know how to cook? Download this simple, easy to follow podcast to Zune and you have your guide in your pocket!

In fact, there are over 800,000 hours of audio and video shows available on the Wizzard Media Network. The latest podcasts are showcased on their wizard home page - but you can check this link for listings for over 300 videos available through wizard

Share