A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our other blogs:

Details on On Demand Online, aka TV Everywhere
Comcast and Time Warner held a joint press conference to announce details around the On Demand Online initiative. Specifically, Comcast will begin a trial next month to test out its authentication system and gather feedback on the new web video service.

How Your Set-Top Gets Updated
If you’ve always wondered how your set-top accesses firmware updates, or if you’re a cable operator looking for a more efficient way to do code downloads, this is the post for you.

MovieWall – A Beautiful Movie Interface for SageTV
Sage MovieWall has been in development for several months and is still in beta, but in my opinion has made some significant strides and looks absolutely fantastic. The result is an beautiful, free add-on User Interface for your movie collection.

How to Get U.S.-only iPhone Apps with Hotspot Shield
With a few easy steps that take only minutes to complete using the HotSpot Shield VPN service, iPhone users the world round can get access to some (but not all) of the iPhone Apps that are only supposedly only available in the U.S.

How Much Did RIM Pay For Dash Navigation?
By buying Dash for $8.3 million, who raised $71 million in three rounds of financings, RIM will get a $26 million haircut on their taxes. While I can understand why Dash and RIM wouldn’t necessarily celebrate this transaction, lets hope that they are being honest with us about implementing Dash’s technology into their products.

Comcast Launches WiMAX Service, Takes Cable Wireless
The long-fabled quad play may have finally arrived and it doesn’t look anything like originally envisioned. Comcast launched wireless broadband service in Portland Oregon combining the Sprint 3G network and the Clearwire 4G network.

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our friends at Last100:

Hulu really hates the TV, PlayStation 3 blocked
Following the Boxee fiasco, the PS3 has become the latest means by which to conveniently watch Hulu content on a television has been blocked. Users who try to visit the site via the PS3’s built-in web browser are being greeted with the message: “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

Flash 10 coming to smartphones this October? Apple and RIM still missing in action
It seems that Adobe is well on track to deliver a version of Flash 10 for smartphones. Adobe CEO Shantanu Naraye said as much during the company’s latest earnings call, revealing that “multiple partners have already received early versions of this release…”.

Pirate Bay’s YouTube competitor lives on (The Video Bay)
The project was to build a kind of YouTube-esque video streaming site, but one that operates outside of mainstream copyright law. Now we learn that the project, dubbed “The Video Bay”,  lives on.

Nokia testing “long form” video service
Nokia is particularly interested in “kick-starting” the consumption of long-form content on mobiles by utilizing a podcast style delivery method whereby users subscribe to various video feeds, presumably enabling content to be downloaded to the device “over-the-air” rather than being “side-loaded”.

Just a follow up to my previous post on video on the Android, as has been reported a few places, Qik is now available for the G1. It has a lot of limitations, based on the T-Mobile network and the camera hardware, but it does work, and it opens up some very cool possibilities. The ability to live-stream from such a small device will allow for video coverage of places that previously would have been impractical if not impossible.

I’m really looking forward to doing some field testing with Qik on the G1 at the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con, which should be a lot of fun, at least as long as I can keep a 3G connection, and the battery holds out.

Catch more of Bruce’s digital media musings over at Digitalwerks.

Last night, Ben Drawbaugh (EngadgetHD) and I discussed Boxee’s recent news with Randall Bennett of TechVi. MLB’s endorsement of Boxee’s platform goes a long way towards validating their model – premium content providers can get paid using alternative distribution methods, happily coexisting with Internet-exclusive video produced outside of big media channels (like a TechVi or Revision3). Something Hulu’s currently unwilling to embrace beyond of their explicit control. We also touch on the new Boxee Windows client and where Boxee could go next.

Less than a year on the market, the SlingCatcher’s entrance fee has dropped more than 50% from retail launch pricing of $300 down to a rock bottom $130. I can only assume sales are horrible. Which pains me on personal level. The digital media Swiss Army knife vision of the SlingCatcher was a factor in my joining Sling Media way back when. And the execution of that vision was also a factor in my decision to leave. (”losing my religion“) However, despite it’s imperfections and unfulfilled promise, $130 to merely stream from a Slingbox to another television in the home or abroad is a great value – neverminding those hobbled extender and DMA capabilities. (Performance/functionality firmware updates have been trickling out.) Here’s hoping this “sale” also foreshadows a new SlingCathcer in the pipeline with the sort of chipset the upcoming Popcorn Hour C-200 utilizes. But with Sling’s corporate ownership and industry-wide weakened retail sales, I wouldn’t count on it.

Wanting to check out a “few” new apps?  Thanks in part to the Boxee dev challenge, Boxee has a boatload of new apps to show off.  The list has some really ingenious ones and some incredibly bizarre ones, but you can’t argue that there aren’t enough apps these days can you Boxee’s dev is open for voting so if you’re a Boxee user and want to vote for your favorite app do so before the polls close on June 22nd at 11:59pm PT. Winners will be announced at the Boxee event in San Francisco on June 23rd. They also plan to launch the Windows version of Boxee, announce new partnerships and share more info about the boxee beta at the event. More info at the Boxee Blog.

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The guys over at networkmediatank’s forums have been waiting anxiously for more details on the newest version of the Popcorn Hour (C200) and Sybas finally delivered the specs and a few pics to feed the frenzy. Some things I noticed when browsing the specs and the forum Q&A include:

• It’s pretty big – much bigger than those older Popcorn Hours. The C-200 (16.73″ x 11.42″ x 3.14″) appears to be close to 2x the size of the A110 (10.5″ x 5.25″ x 1.25″)
• A nice move up to the much faster (more powerful) SMP8643 Sigma Chip (the A110 uses the SMP8635)
• It looks like it will support standard DVD and Blu-ray – there’s a removable drive tray that seems to support a hard drive, DVD drive or Blu-ray Drive!
• Gigabyte Ethernet support finally.  Too many media players don’t yet support this.
• It comes with an RF remote control – something not all that common even these days.  I’ll be interested in seeing what that remote looks like.  I would guess it will be something much less than a Harmony remote and closer in function/style to the Snapstream Firefly remotes.

I didn’t see anything showing price, but I’m betting it will start in the $300 price range at least.  Those GB-PVR guys have to be excited about this media player as they can use this thing as an extender.

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