Keep in mind these are fairly dense (judging from the ones I've attended in years past) and assume a reasonable amount of background - they're not google tech talks. 'Christmas Lecture' makes them sound universally accessible but that's not quite the case. It's helpful if you're familiar with the sort of topics covered in his Concrete Mathematics. Also if you're expecting a lecturer in the Feynmanian stratosphere, you might be disappointed. Certainly interesting stuff, with those caveats.
Edit: A few minutes into this lecture after drawing a graph and its Laplacian matrix on a bit of paper he says 'I'm not going to use high-powered determinant theory in this talk but if determinants scare you, too bad, just enjoy the jokes'.
I'm looking forward to the summaries, but are you sure Knuth wants his videos on YouTube? I'd ask, first. Right now they are available via iTunes and SCPD-- I imagine if he wanted them on YouTube, he would have had them put there....
I might be one of the few who enjoyed it, didn't watch the whole thing yet. Even though I have never watched his earlier talks to make a comparison, at 71 he might not be in his best form when giving talks.
Why surprising? I don't think I've ever seen any correlation between greatness and ability to give a talk. I certainly remember at university we had courses by world class leaders in their fields that put everyone to sleep and lectures by recent grad students which where really great.
Excellent! I attended this talk in person and it was great to see him work. (I'm the "the guy from Boston" that Knuth referred to.) Picture with Knuth: http://twitpic.com/sqxku
My note-taking pages were absolutely loaded by the end of the talk. I'm glad I got to hear from him at least once in my life!
Edit: A few minutes into this lecture after drawing a graph and its Laplacian matrix on a bit of paper he says 'I'm not going to use high-powered determinant theory in this talk but if determinants scare you, too bad, just enjoy the jokes'.