Personally, I despise DRM, and therefore despise the iTunes Store (formerly the iTunes Music Store). Not only is it overpriced and DRM-laden, but the quality leaves much to be desired. You can get better quality audio and video with a CD or a TiVo and a simple analog->digital bridge (I have a little Dazzle-branded box) and a copy of Handbrake.

And so, in honor of iTunes 7’s release, I will be posting a few articles about how to get your content into iTunes, so that it works as well as (or better than) what’s already in there. Read the whole series!

First up: Video.

iTunes has decent video support, and it’s much better in the latest version. But here’s the thing, you may prefer to encode your video in DivX, XviD, 3viX, Windows Video (WMV) or some other format which iTunes and Front Row won’t accept. (The same is true of most video you can download elsewhere on the ‘net, legally and otherwise.)

So how do you get these oddball formats into iTunes (and, by extension, Front Row) without having to buy your videos all over again from the iTunes store?

Two picks on one day?! Well, I was just too excited about this one to not share it immediately!

Perian isn’t anything terribly sexy or cool. It’s a simple Quicktime component which adds support for a variety of codecs to the Quicktime player. (Specifically, XviD, DivX, AVI MPEG-4, MS MPEG-4, 3viX and more.)

Why not just use VLC?

Well, like VLC, Perian offers easy smooth playback, and simple installation, but it also builds all this video support into Quicktime, so that it works with Front Row and any other video player based on Qu