Quommunication seems to have started all this with their Video theme.
Like their previous News Theme, it’s very simple and to the point. There’s no clutter or bloated feature list—just video. First impressions are great, It looks different from the crowd. However, browsing around the theme makes it seems as if the author(s) just wanted to get this out quick. I say that because if you were to click around the theme, say the about page reveals just some dummy text you’d find in a typical fresh install of WordPress. Compare this to demoing a revolution theme and you’ll get where I’m coming from.

Besides the large video area prominently being displayed, there’s nothing really fancy about this theme. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what video bloggers are in to, just posting their videos online with no fluff. If so, then Quommunication’s Video theme truly succeeds at that. Awesome.

One other notable Video theme is TV.Elements from WP Elements.
Jason’s TV.Elements theme looks sharp! It’s more feature packed with a somewhat similar approach to Quommunication’s Video Theme.

You could almost say it’s version 2.0 of Quommunication’s Video theme (in a good way). Like Quommunication’s Video theme, it’s stripped down to the basics with a touch of AJAX so video bloggers can focus on producing video and not get too worried about customizations and all that jazz. There’s are a few validation errors in TV.Elements that I’d check out, but that’s just me. Overall, not bad for a $25 50 dollar theme.

Both Video themes (paid), seem to be targeting the same video blogger niche. I’d be interested in seeing what other premium theme authors plan on doing in this niche.

Adii wrote up one of his first tutorials explaining how to add a video tabber to one of your current themes. Its not quite the standalone approach Quommunication and WP Elements took, but its nonetheless a good start for someone looking to add video to their themes without it taking over the entire focus.

So what’s next? It seems as if the current video themes have only scratched the surface of what video bloggers need nowadays. I guess the best place to look for further innovation is what problems video bloggers currently face and how theme author’s can address them in a simple, elegant way. I, for one got my hands full in other affairs so I won’t be playing in this niche just yet. However I’ve got some clever ideas if it comes down to it. Can’t wait to see what pops up next!

Comparisons from the old look to the new look:

Design:

Major design changes have been made to the entire layout making it a new breed and not just a revision. Adii now features a three column layout on the homepage with a featured section highlighting his latest and greatest article. Browsing into inner pages in the blog changes the layout into two columns. He also incorporated his mascot that was seen in many advertisement campaigns he ran on multiple blogs and websites.

For the sidebar, Adii brought the category section up, displaying it in a tag like generated fashion.
Underneath, he also changed the advertisement section, bringing the ad slots down in numbers and adding rotation functionality to switch between the 8 different sponsors being displayed.

Small Adii Bits

I’m going to assume that this section is where Adii can post his asides category. He previously talked about having a section away from the main content where he’d write about personal thoughts and whatnot.

New additions to the blog are social media buttons below each blog post. These buttons give quick and easy submission to popular social websites like Digg, StumbleUpon, del.ici.ous and more.
More things like an rss feed count and Gravatar support have also been added to the blog.

After all these changes, Adii still managed to keep one of his previous theme’s major highlight, the Polaroid pictures.

In conclusion:

Overall, I think Adii did a great job on the redesign compared to his previous theme.
While its a big step forward, I think he might need to make a few more minor improvements like making some adjustments to the background texture of the layout. Adii has gone with something similar to the “wood” trend designers have been doing lately which looks great if done correctly, but the contrast is a little too heavy. Another thing would be to get more creative with typography. I’d play around with the fonts on the blog.