Recommended: A Digital Media Primer for Geeks
This is the first video tutorial in a new series by the Xiph.org open source community, in order to spread techie-level knowledge about digital media as well as their own work involving new media research. In their own words, it "presents the technical foundations of modern digital media via a half-hour firehose of information." Luckily, there's also an accompanying wiki that allows you to slow things down a little.
