If you own an Apple TV, you’re probably frustrated by the fact that most videos you download from various parts of the Web aren’t compatible with it. If they were, it would be a mere matter of seconds between the time you finished the download and sat down to watch the video in your lounge room.

There is a way around the hassle of constantly converting videos, though, with a bit of software and trickery. We take you through the steps to automating the conversion process and show you how to fix video metadata in iTunes, which is infamous for not allowing you to change the video kind from movie to TV show or music video if you acquired the media from anywhere but the iTunes Store.

Apple claims to have sold 200 million TV episodes to date, including one million sold in HD format since the option became available in September. And in customary fashion, the company is looking to expand on those figures with three primary pursuits: more selection, more selection, and more selection still.

Following a summer season chock-full of game-show and reality programming, this fall Apple is making an effort to provide as many dramas and comedies and the like from as many networks as possible for iTunes shoppers. The company now names ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC as HD-friendly within the pages of its storefront.

The music business has to be one of the most contentious online of all industries with so many players involved. On one side you have the record labels who are facing an ever increasing devaluation of their physical media business. You have the trade organizations for the music industry trying to maintain their power base and millions of dollars of income. Then there are all the online providers of downloadable content trying to eek out marginal profit margins; if you can count millions of dollars as marginal. The last two players of this complex game of power and money are the musicians themselves and us - the fans, the listeners, the purchasers of all that music.

MySpace Music, the social network’s foray into free streaming and digital downloads, has some grand ambitions. Co-Founder Chris DeWolfe compares it to the rise of MTV, telling Fortune, “… how they created pop culture in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. I think that’s what MySpace Music will do now.â€

Stepping aside from the visions of grandeur, MySpace Music is more than anything an experiment in scale. The site has tens of millions of users, many of who fall into the demographic that most aggressively consumes music. Additionally, virtually every major artist under the sun already has a presence on the site, with tens of thousands of “friends†to whom they can sell music, merchandise, and concert tickets.

One of my fondest memories as a kid was saving up my money and making the trip to the record store where I would spend what seemed like hours going through the LP bins. Finally, I would narrow down my selection to what money I had in my pocket. Sometimes I would be able to get only one album, maybe two or on those rare occasions when there was a sale going on I’d get more. I can still remember the very first album that I bought was YesSongs by Yes, which was followed a couple weeks later by a purchase of Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Last.fm announced today that it has made its service available to Japan and will start streaming music to the country in an effort to expand its presence across the world.  Lost amidst the otherwise mundane news, the company also included an interesting fact: since offering its free on-demand service that lets you stream full songs three times, its click-through purchase rates are up an astounding 119 percent.

The company (rightfully so) believes this success is due to its willingness to let you stream the entire song before you decide whether or not you want to purchase it.

Next New Networks, a Web video company with popular networks such as “Veracifier,†“BarelyPolitical,†and “Channel Frederator,†to its name, and which just a few months ago signed a major distribution deal with MySpace TV, has now inked partnerships with the likes of Metacafe, Yahoo, and Hulu.

This effectively drives Next New Networks’ reach across the media delivery market to become one of the top producers. The company purports to be “the number one online video syndicator garnering more views than giants such as HBO, Fox and Warner Brothers,†according to research by TubeMogul, an industry distributor and analyst, which Next New Networks employs to push content to various channels.

The ascent of the iTunes Store has been consistently touted as industry-changing, and not without reason. In the past five years, the Web-based marketplace for downloadable media has gone from startup size to one which, not very long after launch, began to tally sales in the billions, and soon made its big media partners grow hesitant of its influence on music sales and associated pricing controls.

Digital media distribution is done a number of ways now. Through channels such as iTunes; streaming music and video services, like Hulu; and through producers’ own websites, to name a few.

For some time there has also been the option to co-brand a media player. Deals arranged between Miro and businesses like Revision3 and Deutsche Welle are just a couple of examples of this.

Now media owners are given the option to brand a media player developed by zSlide, a Paris-based creator of digital media solutions and services. The player, called Omega Tribes, allows producers to affix their own branding to so-called “white label†software.

Qloud, the music service created by Steve Case that combines search features with sharing and networking, announced today that its My Music application will be available on MySpace.

The application, which is popular on Facebook, Friendster, Hi5 and Bebo, allows you to import and play entire songs and videos from your iTunes library for free. Qloud categorizes songs by recently played, most played, top artists, playlist and top rated.

With the iTunes plugin you can also play music from your friends’ libraries, trade playlists, search for music from their friends, and add new songs to your own library.