The Boxee team have held good to their promise, delivering their first hardware partner (D-Link) and an all-new Beta of the Mac, PC and Apple TV-friendly multimedia service for digital lives.
Perhaps the big news delivered at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last night is that of the Boxee Box by D-Link, the first of what the team hopes becomes a family of products using the Boxee software. We’ll take a quick look at the new beta later in this report.
D-Link has been named first choice as the hardware partner to release a Boxee branded device for the living room (an Apple TV-killer?) the Boxee Box by D-Link.
This promises access to tens of thousands of movies & TV Shows, organisation and playback features for home movies and photos, and music playback from their home network or from Internet sources like Pandora.
The BBC has announced that for the first time ever its key shows will be available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store in Canada, the first time full-length episodes of BBC programs are available from a digital outlet in Canada.
“For those of you working on stories about today’s launch of the Hulu desktop application, I wanted to let you know about the blog post we’ve just put up in response.
“Hulu just launched their own boxee-like application for watching Hulu content. the new downloadable application is built to be used from the couch with a remote.
A few weeks later than we predicted, the BBC today introduced new iPlayer software that lets Mac and Linux users download shows to their computers for offline viewing, a feature enjoyed by Windows users since the launch of the service.
If you are in the UK and connected to the internet you can already play programmes from the past seven days and watch them on the website through Click to Play (streaming). This works on Windows, Macs, Linux, Nintendo Wii and iPhones.
The BBC is serious about attempting to deploy its iPlayer video-on-demand technology as an industry standard, announcing new partnerships with ITV and BT, “to promote a common industry approach and consumer offer to deliver on-demand TV over broadband.”
Such a pan-industry approach may in future pit the BBC and partners against other existing online TV solutions, including iTunes in the UK and similar services elsewhere.
The BBC, Channel 4 and ITV had been working together to establish Project Kangaroo as a one-stop shop for TV show streaming and downloads from the broadcasters. However, in a decision revealed this month UK competition regulators nixed these plans on fears they would stifle competition in the UK market.
iPlayer’s nice and you can purchase TV shows from iTunes, but what about live TV? Mobile TV on iPhone may one day move from promise to reality, with news now from LiveStation who are developing a solution to let you watch TV news from numerous providers using the Apple mobile. Here’s a demo led by company CEO, Matteo Berlucci.
The BBC Trust has refused permission for the BBC to introduce its own local video service to cover local events in 60 parts of the UK, arguing that it wouldn’t be beneficial enough for the public and that it would have a “negative impact on commercial media”.
Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, said: “It is clear from the evidence that, although licence fee payers want better regional and local services from the BBC, this proposal is unlikely to achieve what they want.
Notes introduced with the release say the updated software lets Apple TV users stream music from the device to Airport Express speakers or other Apple TVs in your house using AirTunes.
Since Apple released its new software, the team behind Boxee have worked incredibly hard to update their solution to work with the Apple TV – read all about it here.
BBC shows including EastEnders, Heroes and Never Mind The Buzzcocks will be available to watch live online from next week, the BBC has announced.
Programming from BBC One and BBC Two will be made available to watch live online simultaneously with their live broadcast from 27 November, Jana Bennett, Director of BBC Vision, announced today.
The Boxee team have held good to their promise, delivering their first hardware partner (D-Link) and an all-new Beta of the Mac, PC and Apple TV-friendly multimedia service for digital lives.
The BBC has announced that for the first time ever its key shows will be available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store in Canada, the first time full-length episodes of BBC programs are available from a digital outlet in Canada.
Statement from 
