iVideo Blast: TV Shows, Movies 99-cents to $1.99.

The rush is on. iTunes Music Store has video: music videos, TV shows, movie trailers. The selection, though growing, remains thin with a limited number of TV shows and movies.

iVideoBlast adds to your iTunes video collection with classic TV shows, movies, and animation shorts, for 99-cents to $1.99. Ready for iTunes. Mac or Windows.

At that price point, I’m willing to try almost anything. Plus, I’m a big fan of George Romero’s original ‘Night of the Living Dead’ so I just had to sign up and get the movie.

iVideoBlast has a small but growing catalog of TV animation (cartoons), classic TV shows, and some classic movies, including a few by Alfred Hitchcock. More of each are on the way.

The whole process of getting a video from iVideoBlast is simple and straightforward (though not as simple as buying at iTunes).

Hit the web site, register, login, select a video, click ‘Buy’, enter your PayPal info, go to the download page, and download. That’s it. No magic. Just easy enough.

What you get to select from is a start for a video collection in iTunes. I say, ‘in iTunes’ because the iVideoBlast videos are downloaded as zipped files which, when unzipped, are movies in iTunes ready .m4v format.

Once you’ve downloaded a movie, unzip it, open iTunes, select File, then Add to Library. Find the file. iTunes puts it into the Video > Movies category.

Connect your new iPod with video and the movie is ready to play. Not bad for 99-cents (animation or TV shows) or $1.99 (movies).

What’s available? There’s a bunch of Andy Griffith Show in black and white. Same with Beverly Hillbillies and The Dick Van Dyke show. All 99-cents.

For animation, there’s cartoons galore. Superman. Casper the Friendly Ghost. Betty Boop. Lots and lots and lots of Betty Boop. A variety of Looney tunes cartoons, and Merrie Melodies cartoons (in color, usually about seven or eight minutes).

Also on the animation list is Popeye, and a cartoon that must come from the 1800s called Private Snafu. My bad. It’s from the 1940s, but then, so is Tera.

Among the movies are titles only those near Tera’s age will appreciate, unless you’re a Hitchcock fan. There’s Dick Tracy, the classic Frankenstein, and the original ‘The Fast and The Furious.’ Don’t look for souped up Hondas or Toyotas on this 1954 classic.

Alfred Hitchcock classics include, among others, Blackmail, Jamaica Inn, and Number Seventeen. I’ll ask Tera about those. I think they’re her generation.

The TV shows run less than 30-minutes and the movies usually a little over an hour.

In summary, what you get from iVideoBlast, for 99-cents or $1.99, is a bunch of videos—TV shows, movies, and cartoons—all classics. Very classic.

I pulled down a few of each and the quality, audio and video is quite good, though not HD, of course. The movies enlarge well in QuickTime and pop right into iTunes, too.

I have only two gripes about iVideoBlast, both of which are important, but should be taken care of over time.

The first gripe is the download speed. If you’re in a hurry to see a movie or TV show, click download, and then take the rest of the day off. Downloads are very slow, but steady.

The second gripe is the selection. True, it’s videos you won’t find on the iTunes Music Store video section, so there’s an advantage. In total, there’s plenty of video to choose from, but that’s deceiving.

We want more. More selection. More categories. And more movies that I don’t have to ask my grandma who the stars or. Or, ask Tera. Same thing.

Outside, of that, the overall experience was simple, straightforward, inexpensive, and let me add to my growing iTunes video collection. We’re a nation of collectors, right?

iVideoBlast plans more videos, faster downloads, and a feature where members (just register; it’s free) can upload their own videos. That would be cool. Why? I’ve got a video of Tera at the beach from last year.

Of course, it’s one of those one piece bathing suits that goes to her ankles, I think. You get the idea. Click Here for a look at the iVideoBlast video list and login link.

Bambi Hambi
Remind me not to let you take any video of me.

Jack D. Miller
I downloaded Night of the Living Dead, too. What a classic. Slow download and limited selection, but an easy process.

Tera Patricks
Remind me to have you carded and expelled next time we go out to dinner. From what I can see, iVideoBlast is an early entry into what will be a crowded field: videos for iTunes. Get’em while they’re hot.