TiVo on Thursday announced that its Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs will soon support YouTube content, allowing users to browse and view videos on the Google-owned service. In the future, TiVo hopes to introduce a login interface, which would let users access their YouTube accounts, videos, channels, and playlists. Tivo expects to have the update delivered over “the next few weeks” for the aforementioned players.

“YouTube brings video where the audience is – across the Web and onto mobile devices, TVs and video games,” said Hunter Walk, YouTube’s director of product management. “The partnership with TiVo extends our ability to make YouTube accessible anywhere and lets people watch what they want, when they want it.”

The upgrade gives the TiVo one of the few direct YouTube interfaces in a set top media box, with the most prominent alternative being Apple TV.

Amazon on Thursday is revealing Video on Demand, its second approach to online video. Unlike the company’s own Unbox service, which requires that users download the entire video, the new feature will depend on streaming alone; while it depends on an active Internet connection, the feature will allow devices with little to no hard drive space to buy TV shows, and buy or rent movies, with the same access as full computer users.

The new VOD feature similarly remembers which videos the user owns or is renting, allowing them to play back that content on any computer or device without the digital rights management that limits Unbox videos to Windows PCs and TiVo video recorders. The initial service will be cross-platform and support both Mac OS X and Windows PCs, as well as Sony’s BRAVIA Internet Video Link add-on for its line of HDTVs. Other devices are expected in the future but haven’t been specified outside of likely future BRAVIA TVs that will include the Internet link as a standard feature.

The service will be available in a trial version for some users effective today but will launch in a broader fashion this summer, according to Amazon.

Video on Demand potentially returns an edge to Amazon for Internet video services believed lost to iTunes, which began offering movies for rent available both through Apple TV as well as iPhones and iPods. Notably, Amazon doesn’t have complete studio support and is missing content from both ABC and its parent company Disney, which counts Apple chief Steve Jobs as a board member.

Networking device manufacturer D-Link and DivX have begun shipping the first DivX Connected media player in the U.S. (distribution in Canadian markets is expected to soon follow). The HDMI-connected D-Link MediaLounge DSM-330 offers streaming of music, photos, Internet services and high definition video from PCs to any connected television, ostensibly challenging Apple TV, Apple’s device for the living room. The set-top box, however, uses the slower 802.11g networking (or optional wired Ethernet), while most newer devices, including Apple TV, use the new (and faster) 802.11n band. Unlike Apple TV, the device supports a larger range of format, including DivX (including DivX VOD files), Xvid and WMV9 (transcoded on PC) as well as a variety of image formats, including JPEG, JPEG 2000 and BMP (non-compressed). Continue Reading…

Internet video-on-demand provider Akimbo 23. May 2008. has been confirmed by NewTeeVee as having shut its doors. The company says it has so far been unable to raise enough cash to remain profitable for its video delivery services and has decided to drop all but a bare minimum of staff while it seeks a mergers and acquisitions partner to buy up the company’s assets. All video services run by the company at present, including Homezone and MavTV, are still running, according to checks.Chief finance officer Peter Chantel is now known to be the only remaining executive at the company but declines to say how many remaining employees are at Akimbo; the company has been steadily laying off employees, with 10 dropped earlier this month and another 14 as part of ramping down its operations this week.

The company is considered one of the early pioneers of networked media set-top boxes and as late as 2006 was supplying features using an RCA hub that would ultimately be offered in devices like the Apple TV or the recently unveiled Roku Netflix player, delivering Internet-based movies on demand through MovieLink as well as a host of TV and TV-like channels. Lack of demand ultimately forced Akimbo to bring its services to the web and ultimately to drop its direct-to-public services entirely as it began supplying content for others’ services, with only a handful of active clients.

To date, there has been a number of Apple TV users who have reported that problems with their wireless connections have started to appear, related to 5GHz 802.11n networks only after the installation of the 2.0.1 update. It seems that the update installation has resulted in Apple TV finding difficulty staying hooked up to certain wireless connections, suffering from dropped connections after a while.

So far quick fixes include switching to a 2.4GHz network or turning off the “Use wide channels” option of Apple’s Airport Extreme Base Station.