Almost every month we hear about new supported services being added to networked Blu-ray players and HDTVs from the likes of LG, Samsung, and others. Today Samsung is pushing out a new firmware update that adds YouTube (not YouTube HD — at least not yet) and Blockbuster video streaming to its line of Network Blu-ray players. But if that wasn’t enough Samsung has added support for the fairly new and popular video container, MKV. According to CNET, an MKV-wrapped AVC file worked well playing off a USB flash drive and had no problems jumping forward and back through the track. MORE »

Wall Street Journal is reporting that YouTube is in negotiations with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Sony Corp. and Warner Bros. to deliver premium movie titles to users for a fee. The price, insiders say, will be around $3.99 with new titles made available the same day DVDs are released. The same insiders tell the WSJ that 10,000 Google employees will be invited to test the service for three months before going public, if the company is able to bring the studios on board. Lets keep our fingers crossed that a deal gets worked out soon — and that the price comes down a bit (under $2 sounds good to me). Interesting side note from the article: YouTube currently gives studios 70% of the ad revenue generated on their current library of movie titles.

YouTube has quietly rolled out a made-for-TV UI for their video portal called YouTube XL. Thankfully, users can access it directly from any web browser that supports Flash. After a quick run-through, I found that YouTube XL worked fairly well. The design is not the most attractive thing I’ve seen, but it works. In fact, I’ve heard that XL’s UI, with its large buttons, works surprisingly well on devices with a touchscreen interface. Another nice touch… YouTube XL offers a continuous play feature that will auto-play all videos related to a searched topic in sequential order. It will be interesting to see which CE manufactures end up taking advantage of this native interface for their devices.

In a move that’s obviously a shot across the bow of Hulu, YouTube has announced that visitors can now view “thousands of television episodes and hundreds of movies” instantly through the site from partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, and Starz. Visitors can access the TV show and movie content via the site’s newly added Shows menu tab. In addition, YouTube members can subscribe to partner channels to be notified of any newly added content. MORE »

If you’re running MediaMall’s PlayOn server application ($39.99 – 14 day free trial available) on your Windows Vista PC, you’re gonna be ecstatic to learn that a freeware add-in called vmcPlayIt has been released that will display available Netflix, Amazon VOD, Hulu, YouTube, CBS, CNN, ESPN content directly through the Windows Vista Media Center and Media Center Extender interface. Overall, the integration looks pretty solid from the screenshots available. Give it a spin and let us know how well it works for you. [via]

Looks like the guys at LG aren’t threatened by the likes of Samsung’s BD-P2500. LG is announcing that in the next few weeks owners of their BD300 Network Blu-ray Player will gain access to CinemaNow – including its HD library – and YouTube content directly from their player. These new enhancements are in addition to LG’s recently added Netflix HD streaming support. Now, if someone can pass the word along that us, connected home enthusiasts, would like to see UPnP functionality added so we can stream our stored media from network PCs and NAS servers, that would be very much appreciated. MORE »

Look out! VUDU is taking their HD video on-demand box to a new level. The company is announcing the immediate availability of Internet content from sources like Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, as well as, a new “On Demand TV” feature with specialized material from more than 120 channels. But the best news, users will begin seeing a steady stream of new content channels becoming available due to the company’s RIA (Rich Internet Application) platform that any online content provider can leverage to deliver their services. Full press release details below. MORE »

Ok. So I’m a little puzzled and intrigued by what the Neuros LINK is supposed to be exactly. A quick once over reveals that Neuros is intent on jumping on the Internet TV bandwagon by releasing a set-top capable of providing access to content from popular online video portals like Hulu, YouTube, Fancast, NBC, CNN, CBS, and others. The kicker is they’re following ZeeVee’s Zviewer approach by offering a custom browser-based content portal to navigate media from the various providers; BUT the system is also being bundled with a slew of popular free open-source software (MPlayer, VLC, Xine) on top a full installation of Ubuntu 8.10! As you can imagine, the potential of this living room friendly, HD capable $300 box is seemingly endless — if you’re comfortable playing in the Linux environment. (Something tells me we’ll be seeing users installing Boxee on here in no time.) Full specs below | ZNF Photo Gallery: Unboxing & Setup. MORE »

Over the weekend I got tipped off by reader, Nate, that MediaMall has a fairly new software app called PlayOn (powered by ActiveTV) that provides PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and HP MediaSmart TV owners (Nintendo Wii support coming soon) the ability to stream content from some of their favorite Internet video sites like Hulu, CBS, YouTube, and ESPN. It appears that the way PlayOn accomplishes this is through aggregation of website RSS feeds and on-the-fly video transcoding from the PC to supported UPnP consoles/devices when a selection is made. Now the thing that I’m still a bit unclear on is: How is PlayOn supporting Netflix? What kind of Netflix feeds are available? Since I don’t have a Netflix account, I can’t test this out. Luckily, anyone with a supported device can sign up for the PlayOn Beta and put the software through its paces. MORE »

TiVo Inc., the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced the availability of YouTube videos on the TV via a TiVo® DVR. A partnership between the two companies allows broadband-connected subscribers with TiVo Series3™ and TiVo HD DVRs, to access hundreds of millions of user generated videos hosted on YouTube. Whether you like to watch the new up-n-comers, or classic YouTube favorites, TiVo subscribers are in control of the content they want to watch, whenever they want to watch it. MORE »