The French have beaten the UK's Sky deal by allowing X360 owners to access Canal+ live television and also on demand services on their consoles. Football matches will be available to watch live with your buddies online, along with a big archive of over 3000 films...hopefully we are gonna get a similer service here in the UK! The US has netflix.. french have Canal... Sky better bring us something good!

The original Popcorn Hour was one of the best media streamers on the market, and with the C200 they seem to have outdone themselves, adding internet streaming and the potential for Blu-Ray playback, as well as it's normal playback features, which should allow it to be pretty much the best peice of streaming equipment on the entire market! However it will cost $299, a fair amount, but for the capabilities it gives, it's certainly a worthwhile investment!

LG have just announced the cent-under-400-bucks pricing of their BD390, and in all honesty, I don't think it's that bad of a deal. Firstly, you arn't getting a decent player for under $200 yet.... and all of those above it don't don't have anywhere near the featureset of the LG box; which has full BDLive support through a Wifi connection, as well as 7.1 channel outputs, and here's the kicker; full streaming DivX support, so you can whack all those legal TV shows you've got on your PC, onto your screen ;)!

Just hoping the playback quality is up to scratch, and it'll be my new Blu Ray player... PS3 to be moved to the games room!

Logitech's Harmony remote is a godsend for me; it controls everything that I own, with a truely fantastic interface. Up until now however, my PS3 has been sorely left out, and I've had to keep using the 'pad in order to play my Blu-Rays. No longer, however! Logitech have released an addaptor (pictured above) that allows the Harmony to be used in conjunction with your PS3.

Unfortunatly it's priced at a cent under sixty bucks. Owch. Totally worth it, though.

Sony have just piped up with some information about a new line of Bravia TVs featuring an ethernet port; allowing them to download RSS feeds and other information over the internet, directly to the TV screen. It's a pretty cool idea that definitely works well in a "connected home". You can have your mediaPC switched off and just be watching regular TV, but an RSS update will let you know that a new episode of your favorite streaming show has come out, letting you get on with watching it.... it's just a good concept, really.

China have decided that they arn't such a fan of Blu ray, like the rest of the world, and have as such developed CBHD. All we know is they once more use the Blue laser in order to read data, and as such are high density disks capable of full movies at 1080p. Supposedly they are 40% cheaper, but will companies come to support it? Supposedly WB are in..but nothing has appeared as yet. The above is a pic of some players which apparently support the format!

More as we get it.

DoubleTwist is the new piece of software to come out of the mind of the notorious DVD Jon; the man who broke the original DVD copy protection. It's set to be something pretty big too; aiming to allow users to import media from from anywhere, and have it all in a single playable format, without having to worry about the complexities of setting encoding paramiters or possibly even cracking encryption.

They've just got funding and are now demoing a windows version, check it out!

I love my PS3. It sits at the hub of my media centre and plays blu rays, dvds, cds, and even my occasional SACD (I have an early model!). It's quiet, reliable, and it does almost everything I want, and will be even closer when I get round to aquiring a PlayTV.

However, for you US guys it just gets better! Netflix has posted a survey asking whether people would be interested in the online rental service running on PS3s. What I wouldn't give for that over here! Instead of making my way to the rental shop to grab a movie for a night or two, I could just bung it on download from Netflix!

Heres to hoping it works out, and they eventually expand into the UK!

Okay, so idealy we'd all love a HTPC, but personally I don't want to shell out lots of money. Something like the previously talked about Popcorn Hour machine has provided most of the functions I could want, but it's still a little too costly for my liking, essentially as it isn't really doing much at all!

Now, Western Digital have come up with a little box that streams off connected HDDs (or from a network with a little black magic) and are retailing it for a recession busting sub £100. It supports full 1080p, outputted via HDMI, as well as a massive range of codecs, including the crucial MKV.

Check it out.

Engadget have gone hands on with QNAPs new media streamer, the NMP1000. While much like every other set top box that is being made these days, this thing has a slick design, a good UI, and supports pretty much any format out there, including full 1080P.

No price on hand, but it's definitely worth having a look if you are considering one of these little gadgets in the future!