[[Free.fr www.free.fr]]’s set top box, the “Freebox”, lets one play videos from a remote computer, provided said computer runs a [[VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/]] server.
[[YouTube http://www.youtube.com]] has a lot of funny videos, but sometimes it’d just be nicer to watch them on TV, wouldn’t it?
Well, you can actually download Youtube videos to your computer using, for example, [[this Firefox plugin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3242]]. It’ll save a ‘flv’ file, a Flash Video format. You can either try to transcode it with mencoder: 
mencoder video.flv -ovc copy -oac copy -o video.avi

or simply rename it as .avi: that way, the Freebox will see the file, and VLC will magically convert it on-the-fly.

Now go try it out on this hilarious video about [[Achmed the dead terrorist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go]]