Pictures and words are powerful but videos have the edge and the country's major media organizations seem to agree. It's not just video sharing sites like Youku and Tudou but also mainstream media giants like Sina that have got in on the action.

They parlay traditional news resources and "borrow" or buy footage from diverse and far-reaching agencies. They stream TV series and movies, in addition to hosting netizens' videos. There's also a burgeoning private sector producing short films, soap operas and animations. The result is a turbo-charged journey through the national headspace.

As if to underline the variety, Sina Video has 12 categories of top 10 videos on offer. Most viewed this week is a segment on the unraveling of Hong Kong celebrity couple Nicholas Tse and Cecilia Cheung; a Shanghai TV news anchor who strips down for a video on what appears to be the benefits of an essential-oil massage experience; and a Taoyuan, Taiwan province, man who catches a pervert red-handed on his bus.

These professionally produced mainstream videos face stiff competition, however, from amateurs called paike. This army of netizen videographers typically produce low budget, first-person mini-documentary style pieces. If you saw videos of the recent floods in Beijing the best ones were uploaded by those caught in the flash storm themselves. Paike are in the right place at the right time with a smart phone or small video camera. Their candid or unadulterated works are a refreshing change from heavily edited mainstream media offerings.

It appears that people want to get off the beaten news track and experience, from the comfort of their armchairs, what's really going on out there, in between the cracks of society, off the TV radar. Sina Video's top three paike videos this week are: A woman talks a young man carrying a knife out of suicide by giving him a kiss; a long distance sneak peek at China's first aircraft carrier in Hong Kong; and Guangzhou's contribution to the World Naked Bike Ride (no nudity).

Paike or shipai (reality film) videos are often the most viewed on the site and a whole grassroots industry is steadily evolving, providing diverse content, slices of reality, stories that are so strange they have to be true, first-person narratives, novelty acts and assorted entertainment. We're all actors and directors now; privacy is eroded and life is just the setting for videos. We're approaching the place where reality TV is only just scratching the surface.

At the same time, video streaming sites are increasingly starting to fund original filmmaking or soap opera productions. Actors have been quick to jump ship and even the big names appear convinced of the future of the Internet as our principal source for videos in the near future.

To underline the march of progress, Youku's Victor Koo recently celebrated five years in business and promised online TV would continue to expand, by championing the paike, as well as fresh talent in the film industry.

This migration to online TV is not news, what's interesting is how the whole media field has opened up to everyone - and no more so than in China, which is spoilt for choice.