Tunes - Tuneflow

Firefox with Greasemonkey (All platforms): YouTube Buffer Video prevents clips on YouTube from auto-playing, letting you buffer entire videos and prevent annoying snags when bandwidth is tight.

iPhone or iPod touch only: When you can't wrest the TV remote from your father-in-law to watch the news this week, fire up the all-new ABC News iPhone app. The latest entry into news-based iPhone apps, ABC News offers top stories, location-specific news alerts, and videos from shows like Good Morning America and 20/20. Take a look at a few screenshots.

Download Squad reports that internet video service Joost will discontinue its desktop player effective December 19th. Joost introduced its web version in October to compete with the popularity of sites like Hulu, and now the online portal will be all that's left.

Online movie rental service Netflix continues to expand its reach in streaming video rentals, opening up on TiVo menus today. Now that Macs, PCs, TiVos and media centers are covered, where would you like to see the red-label service head next? [via]

YouTube switched to widescreen format a week and a half back, and now the popular video sharing site appears officially to be streaming videos in HD. From the look of things, most videos that were uploaded in HD should now have a watch in HD link to the bottom right of the video for high quality HD viewing.

Photo-sharing site Flickr's mobile interface (m.flickr.com) got a facelift and a few upgrades today, notably the ability to play back video clips. Right now the Flickr folks say video playback is limited to the iPhone and iPod touch, but despite several tries on my iPhone, I never did see any video movement.

Netflix's streaming video-on-demand Watch Instantly service should now be available for all subscribers, having just come out of beta. It requires installing Microsoft's Silverlight browser plug-in. [via]

YouTube is full of videos that don't require singled-minded attention, but trying to keep a YouTube page visible in the background for passive watching isn't easy. Digital Inspiration's Amit Agarwal suggests two methods, though, that work great for browsing other sites or doing actual, you know, work, while keeping a video cornered and always on top.

iPhone/iPod touch only: Television and movie streaming service Joost officially finds its way to the iPhone and iPod touch.

Web site Sling streams popular television shows and movies through a web-based Flash player. Sling is brought to you by the company behind the Slingbox, a living room gadget capable of streaming live TV from your home to any computer in the world.