Neuros, who built their reputation with weird, chunky (but wonderful) modular MP3 players, has long since moved exclusively to the home entertainment field. Their latest attempt at eroding the Apple TV's market share is the Link, a set-top streaming box that will pull video from a wide range of online TV sources — Hulu, NBC, ABC, etc. — as well as stream local audio and video content from any USB hard drive. As is always the case with Neuros set-tops, the Link's software is open source and ready for modification. This time, mercifully, that might not be the box's biggest draw.

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Sesame Street, the wonderful children's show that basically everybody grew up on, is coming to the web. Soon, you'll be able to access full episodes from season 35 of the show on iTunes, with about 100 clips coming to both Hulu and YouTube. I'm hoping there will be a nice combo of new stuff for today's kids with retro clips for big kids like me to relive my childhood. Big Bird! Snuffy! Oscar the Grouch! You're never too old for Sesame Street. [Reuters]

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This is a guide that, if followed, will unchain your Apple TV from its cruel iTunes tether, turning it into the useful living room conduit of music, video and web-based content it should have been all along via the media centre software Boxee. Boxee can be installed fairly easily via the ATV's USB port to bring Hulu and Comedy Central streaming, playback of any video or music file anywhere on your network in virtually any file type imagineable, and a bevy of internet A/V sources like Flickr, Last.fm, NPR and BBC podcasts and tons of others--all upping the usefulness and fun of Apple's notoriously underachieving box by a factor of 10, easily. If you have an ATV, Boxee is a must-install, and it's 100% free. Let's get started.

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Boxee, the free media centre software that you can easily install on your Apple TV via a USB patch stick (as well as any other recent OS X machine), now supports Hulu streaming, as well as CBS and Comedy Central (for South Park and Daily Show/Colbert). It's an alpha release, so you'll need an invitation to download the app (use this special hookup for Giz readers) to get streaming. It will also play videos of myriad codecs stored on networked drives, and lots of other tastiness. A quick try on my Intel Mac yielded a nice stream of the most recent episode of the Office--not bad at all. Ahem, Apple--third parties are now not just walking, but dancing circles around you with these unofficial add-ons. [Boxee]

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The poor kids at Joost—and their partners at Viacom—thought the future of TV on the computer would be a discrete app that blended a slick TV emulator with internet power. They were wrong, Hulu and Google were right: It's all about the browser. So that's where Joost is going. Its Flash-based player officially launches full-throttle tonight. The early word from paidContent is that it's still no Hulu—the best place for CBS content, maybe, but it's got a lot of catching up to do. Though really, it's not clear that it ever can. There's a reason our internet TV remote is heavy on the Hulu. [Joost via paidContent]

Sling Media (makers of those nifty Sling boxes) has just notified their beta community that new and improved Sling.com services are soon to go live for testing. The first major feature is web-based content viewing for subscribers, eliminating the need for separate players. The second major feature, teased way back in early 2007, is Clip+Sling content sharing.

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PlayOn, a program we checked out a couple months ago that streams Hulu, ESPN, YouTube and CBS streaming from a Windows PC to a PS3, Xbox 360 or HP MediaSmart TV, just released its promised update that'll let you stream Netflix to your PS3 or 360 (though the latter will soon be pointless). It's still in public beta, so it's free for the first 60 days, after that it's $US30—which, after they get all of the bugs worked out, is a small price to pay for Netflix and Hulu on your TV, though I wouldn't be surprised if native Netflix comes to the PS3 eventually. [PlayOn via Zatznotfunny]

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Earlier today, we published the article Comcast's Video Download Store Is Wholly Unremarkable about Comcast's expansion of Fancast, a place to download movies a la Amazon Unbox. Then a reliable tipster filled us in on where Fancast is going—specifically, in the mobile market. And we have to say, it's caught our attention.

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Comcast's internet video site, Fancast, used to be a place to check out Hulu clips and waste away your data cap along with your brain. Now it's a place to buy and rent full-length movies a la Amazon Unbox or iTunes to play on your Windows PC (and up to two other authorised computers). Filled with the same US$3.99 rentals and US$13ish purchases, we wouldn't be writing about this service if Comcast weren't behind it...hopefully with plans to improve things down the line. [Fancast via Zatz Not Funny]

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