GetFLV

RealPlayer has, by default, a video-downloader for any .flv and can convert them to other formats as well.

That's a good point, but I have never read (or been asked to read or accept) the terms of service. I go to the site and watch the videos. If one is worthy of my attention and there is nothing in the page there that says downloading is forbidden, or even so much as the author "asks" that it not be downloaded, I download it. When a guest watches a video on Youtube, the video is actually downloaded to the computer in a mostly hidden manner and played using the computer's player. These softwares shown in the article just un-hide it and save it where you want, instead of where someone else wants. I don't think an actual "YouTube Player" exists. A streaming software must exist. If I download a video from the page on which it is offered, then I am using "the video playback pages of the Website itself" as opposed to going in somehow behind closed doors and taking it from the database, etc. -which might be something they could complain about. I believe that their main concern is the videos showing up elsewhere on another commercial site rather than some private person keeping one they have watched. That's my opinion of it.

I do not d/l very many videos from there, but occasionally there is one worth archiving, as we all know a video can be removed at any time. Maybe someone who is actually an enthusiastic downloader has a different opinion about the whole thing. -other members who have posted about which downloaders they like?

FVD Suite anybody? It works great. Also if you're using Firefox check out Video DownloadHelper, you can easily find it her https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/?sort=users the second one at time of posting this comment. Free Download manager works amazing, unfortunately the plugins for browsers are fairly limited, http://www.filehippo.com/download_firefox/11293/ this is the build of Firefox i'm using right now with it. I really don't use anything else on Firefox. It isn't limited to YouTube (referring to FDM) either, pretty much any flv file, and it can also monitor all downloads so if you have something against Firefox 9 downloader, problem solved. It also has a somewhat unique downloading format, it downloads as if everything was a torrent, hope this helps everybody/anybody By the way, if you use any of these methods and know something I didn't mention i would love to hear it.

FWIW I have used Video DownloadHelper on various Linux systems for the last few years quite happily. Firefox (Iceweasel etc) plugin, so platform agnostic

All windows programs. So much for fair reporting.
Love the Penguin!

I use Keepvid, but I have to admit that a lot of times it will crash IE when it tries to connect to the video. I sometimes have to re-open the keepvid page and re-paste the video URL 4 or 5 times before it works.