No doubt you're familiar with the BBC iPlayer: we've been closely following the product's development since its cross-platform launch a little over a year ago. Since then we've seen plenty of developments, including the release of a desktop client (using Adobe's AIR technology) and today is another notable date for the iPlayer project.

In a move that's likely to please a lot of users - and infuriate already-annoyed internet providers - the BBC has announced that High Definition downloads are now available via a new version of the service's desktop client. The client will detect the speed of your connection which will pick the appropriate bit-rate version depending on your internet connection. The HD content, available as ever to British residents only, is available now via the BBC iPlayer site and there's plenty more content promised including Doctor Who and Dragons' Den.

Popular streaming video provider Mogulus has released a free desktop broadcasting app called Procaster, designed for use with its service. The featureset looks pretty amazing: it promises to broadcast anything from a webcam or from your screen -- or both, side-by-side -- with synced audio and no lag in framerate. There's also a game broadcasting mode that seems explicitly targeted at World of Warcraft players, and audience interaction features, like live chat, that work automatically with any broadcast.

One big advantage of Procaster is that it's free, and so is the Mogulus service, so you the startup costs to create your own web show are extremely low. You can browse and play video clips for your audience in real time, as well, which helps if demos are part of your plan. If Mogulus' service and bandwidth can keep up with the potential popularity of Procaster, I see this app becoming a standard tool of the social web trade. It's only available for Windows right now, but the site says a Mac version is on the way.

VideoSpin is the free video editor that I kind of wish Windows Movie Maker was. It's easy to use, and it doesn't lock up on me the way Windows Movie Maker likes to after I've made a few splices. I first checked out VideoSpin back in early 2008, but today Pinnacle has released an updated version that adds a handful of new features and support for a bunch of new video formats.

VideoSpin 2.0 includes support for YouTube's new higher quality video player. You can upload your finished videos directly to YouTube in widescreen and higher quality formats. You can also import and export .MOV video files, which comes in handy if you have a digital camera that records in Quicktime format.

The basic video editor is available as a free download, but you can also pay for advanced codec support which will allow you to exprt videos in 3GP or Real Media formats. The SpinPack codec pack also adds the ability to save DivX videos or configure your videos for the iPod or PSP. Of course, you can also just save your videos as MPG or AVI files and then use a free video converter like Virtualdub to save convert your files to DivX or XviD. But VideoSpin is aimed at less tech savvy users looking for an all-in-one solution.

If you're in need of some fresh iPhone suggestions this Easter weekend, here's a few awesome apps that have caught our eye or been recently updated. If I've missed your favourite iPhone app, be sure to share it in the comments!

1. Flight Control [$1 - iTunes Link]
Flight Control is a ridiculously-simple, yet super stylish game that tasks you with ensuring that a variety of aeroplanes land on their designated runways. Priced at $1 (at least for now) Flight Control is as addictive as it is slick, and it's got a permanent place on my homescreen.

2. Darkslide [Free with Ads, $3.99 without - iTunes Link]
I've spoken before about Darkslide, but if you're a Flickr fan and recently uploaded videos the the service, you'll love the recent update to Darkslide that lets you playback videos on your phone - great for showing friends and family a video that would have previously required a laptop to playback.

3. Trapster [Free - iTunes Link]
If you're travelling to see family this weekend, Trapster may come in handy. Trapster is a social network that allows users to share the location of speed traps, and their free iPhone app allows you to keep tabs on trap locations around the world on the go: super handy for avoiding an Easter weekend ticket.

4. Ego [$1.99 - iTunes Link]
If you're on the road and want to keep tabs on personal stats such as website visitors (or Twitter followers for the vain amongst you) Ego is for you. Beautifully designed, and with more services being added all the time, Ego is a user interface and web-stat junkies dream.

5. Bump [Free - iTunes Link]
There's a tonne of business-card exchange applications on the App Store. However the consensus in my unscientific tests (conducted, in the name of Download Squad, in the pub with some friends) is that Bump is perhaps the 'funnest'. You and a friend simply launch the application on your iPhones, select the contact details you're happy to share, and then 'bump' the two phones together. Through the magic of location data and timestamps, your vCard is sent, and your contact's vCard is added to your Address Book.

YouTube is already home to more music videos than probably any other site on the internet. But YouTube and Universal Music Group have announced plans to launch a new site, called Vevo, which will be dedicated exlusively to music videos.

Vevo will be an advertising supported site, and the goal is to generate more money from views of professionally produced music videos than music studios like Warner are currently getting from YouTube. The new site will be owned by Universal and will feature higher quality videos than those found on YouTube. Whether advertisers will be willing to pay higher rates, or computer users will actually bother to visit Vevo instead of YouTube remains to be seen.

Vevo is scheduled to launch within the next few months.

Meeting24.tv is a great idea in theory. It's sort of a Yahoo! Live-style video chat (remember Yahoo! Live?), where you can have up to 24 people in a meeting at once. There's a big upside to the service: it's free, it's easy to use, and it doesn't require signup for anyone but the host of the meeting. The downside is that you might run into major lag. When I tested the service, each user's audio and video was lagging by several seconds.

A free account comes with the ability to host a meeting room for 24 hours at a time. The time limit is basically irrelevant, because the number of rooms you can start isn't limited, so you can get around it by starting over. I'm not sure I'd use Meeting24.tv for an actual meeting, as the ability to throw illustrated heart icons at other people is a bit unprofessional.

If you're a journalist, a social scientist or even just a blogger, you've probably been through the process of transcribing a recorded interview. I do a lot of transcription, but I had always done it the hard way: with a text editor open in one window, and my audio in the other. I should have just downloaded Transcriptions, which handles the whole transcription process in one app, with a lot of cool extras.

It supports both audio and video, with adjustable playback rate and automatic or manual time stamping. I don't have a foot pedal, so I haven't been able to test this, but it apparently supports those, too. I know there are other, more elaborate transcription apps out there, but this one is free, easy to use, takes up under 1MB of disk space. It makes my work a lot of less of a pain than it was when I was using Quicktime and TextEdit to do the job of this one neat little app.

With the discontinuation of VisualHub, one of the most popular video conversion apps for OS X, someone had to release an app to fill the void. That app might be VideoMonkey, which builds on VisualHub's source code and concept to convert videos to and from a number of popular formats. VideoMonkey actually improves on VisualHub in some ways, especially because it's a native Cocoa app, where VisualHub was built around AppleScript.

VideoMonkey uses the FFMpeg encoder for most of its work, but it also has the ability to combine with other tools and automatically figure out how to convert even some weird filetypes. For example, if you edit a WMV with Quicktime Pro and save it, VideoMonkey understands how to separate the audio and video and recombine them in a new format of your choice. This all goes on behind the scenes: for the user, it's a 1-click process. If you loved VisualHub, and you're looking for a replacement, VideoMonkey is all that and more.

Sling Media, the makers of the Slingbox set top box and SlingPlayer software have taken the beta label off the company's BlackBerry client. What that means is if you own a Slingbox and have it plugged into your home theater setup, you can stream live TV to your BlackBerry - for a fee. The SlingPlayer Mobile client will set you back $30. There's a 30 day free trial if you don't want to commit without trying the software out first, but you'll also need to have a Slingbox. There's no way around that constraint (unless you've got a friend who's willing to let you login to his or her Slingbox account).

Sling also has mobile clients for Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian. And it looks like an iPhone client is on its way. There's a new SlingPlayer for iPhone web page which shows a software demo video, and you can sign up for an email notification when the program is added to the iPhone App Store.

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Hulu has hired a new VP in charge of international business, paidContent is reporting that Hulu has signed a deal to distribute several TV shows from the UK's Channel 4. But for now, they'll only be available to US viewers.

The deal covers several programs including Peep Show, Rude Tube, Queer as Folk, Green Wing, and Underbelly. The shows aren't available on the web site yet, but they should begin showing up soon.

There's still no word on when Hulu will launch in the UK, or why Hulu couldn't at least work out a deal to stream TV shows purchased from that country in Britain.

Blockbuster announced today that it plans to offer OnDemand videos to TiVo set top boxes during the second half of 2009. Blockbuster will hardly be the first service offering premium internet video streaming to TiVo. You can already find videos from Amazon, CinemaNow, Jaman, and Netflix on a TiVo. But hey, more choices are always a good thing, right?

Blockbuster tried to launch its own set top box in 2008, but the device hasn't gained much traction.

In addition to making the Blockbuster OnDemand video service available on TiVo boxes, Blockbuster has agreed to sell Tivos at many of its 4,000 video rental stores across the US. The New York Times reports that Blockbuster will offer 5,000 to 10,000 video titles at a time, with new releases costing about $3.99 to rent for 24 hours.

Last month Grant, Christina and I checked out a couple of screencasts from Pragmatic Programmers' Bill Dudney. Specifically, we watched "Coding in Objective-C 2.0." We took a look at part one mostly, which is an introduction to the Objective-C syntax and structure, culminating in a basic application. Part two covers memory management in depth. Since then they've added a part 3 on debugging, and the plan is to continue adding more. Part one covers classes, objects and messages and, like the other portions in the series, costs $5. One thing I love about Pragmatic Programmers is that they offer a wide choice of formats, including versions tuned for iPhone viewing and Theora Ogg format.

It's important to note that while Objective-C is the language you'll use for iPhone development, these screencasts alone won't make you an iPhone developer. For one, there are differences in memory management on the iPhone versus desktop apps (iPhone apps don't do garbage collection). Also, iPhone interactions require the use of Cocoa Touch, and that isn't covered in these. If you are looking to move from another OOP language to Objective-C, however, this is a great way to get started. Plus, you really need to understand Obj-C to make solid iPhone apps. The side bonus is that you will also be able to write Mac desktop apps.

These screencasts are particularly useful if you are an audio-visual learner and have some background in programming. Don't expect to come up to speed if you have a slight understanding of a basic scripting language. That said, these are very clearly explained and the structure is great. If you watch the videos and do the exercises, I have little doubt you'll be learning the basics of Objective-C in no time. Listen to the audio as we discuss who these are for and what could be done better.

Online video site Hulu has become one of the most popular video portals in the internet over the past year. It showcases high quality content from major television and film studios with fewer commercials than you'd see if you watched the same programs on TV. But Hulu has faced one major hurdle: The company doesn't have deals in place to distribute that content outside of the US, which is why international users are typically met with a message telling them that videos aren't available when they visit the site.

Hulu's been planning to go global for a while now, but it looks like the company could be a bit closer. PaidContent reports that the company has hired a new vice president to oversee international operations.

It seems likely that one of the first areas outside the US that Hulu will be available will be the UK. What I'd love to see is a reciprocal relationship, where in addition to streaming US content to British viewers, Hulu could work out a deal to distribute BBC content in the US.

Zinc is a full screen browser for internet video. But that description doesn't really do the application justice. Basically, it allows you to watch internet video on your television screen using a remote control almost as easily as a keyboard and mouse. You know, a lot like Boxee. But there's one major thing setting Zinc apart from Boxee: Zinc is based on Firefox. And that's going to make it awfully hard for content partners to detect whether you're using Zinc or Firefox, which means it'll be a lot harder for companies like Hulu to ask Zeevee (the makers of Zinc) to block access.

Zinc started out its life as the interface for a hardware set top box that ZeeVee wanted to charge $499 for. That business model didn't really pan out, so the company split is focus and started working on a $2500 enterrprise hardware solution that lets companies like hotels stream HD content throughout the building and the free Zinc media browser.

Version 3 which came out today has a smoother interface, more detailed information about videos and channels, and content from new sources including The CW, Revision3, and Netflix. You can either install Zinc as a standalone application or download and install a Firefox extension that will let you launch the Zinc interface from within Firefox 3.

Right now Zinc is Windows only, but a Mac version is due out next month.

[via NewTeeVee]