Introduction
Truveo.com has been hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “the best web-wide video search engine I’ve seen.” That’s exactly what Truveo is; a huge library of web videos from full-length movies, to television shows to sports highlights and music videos. A simple navigation bar at the top of the homepage takes the user to one of several video topics.
The quality of the videos is terrific. The videos are shown in a screen that takes up about one-quarter of the monitor, similar to what Youtube provides. What sets Truveo apart from other video search engines is the aforementioned resolution and overall quality of the videos. Other video sites may show videos that are grainy and distorted, but Truveo only archives videos of the highest quality.
Truveo started as a commercial video search engine that worked with companies such as Microsoft and AOL. In 2006, they made the site open to the general public and quickly become one of the top online video search sites on the net.
Features
Truveo presents a user-friendly format to the beginner. The homepage is easily navigated and a search bar at the top of the homepage makes finding a specific video painless.
Links at the far right of the homepage list categories of videos as well as specific television stations that are home to popular shows. If a user missed their favorite show last week, you are guaranteed to find it on Truveo.
The site also features a “popular today” section towards the bottom of the homepage. That provides users with quick links to the videos that are the hottest requests for that day.
The videos operate much in the same way they do at other video sites. The player clearly displays volume and play controls and allows the user to scroll forward and backward throughout the video.
Tips & Tricks
New users will want to check out the Frequently Asked Questions section at the bottom of the homepage. The section provides tips to parents on how to set filters to prevent underage users from browsing the site’s adult content.
Newbie Friendly Rating
Truveo presents a self-explanatory format and is very easy to navigate. Download times can be a bit slow at times and somewhat frustrating. Overall, the experience at Truveo is similar to using other video search sites. What sets Truveo apart from the others is the overall quality of the videos. We give Truveo.com a Newbie Friendly Rating of 8.