The long-awaited Netflix box is finally here, with Roku, better known for making streaming music hardware the first hardware partner to release their product on to the market.

The box, which is available now from the Roku website, costs just $100 and allows users to stream movies and television from Netflix to their TV using the Instant Viewing feature.

Easy Install

Users install the box by hooking it up to their TV sets using composite, component video cables, HDMI or S-Video and then connecting it to their Wi-Fi network or via an Ethernet cable hooked to the box.

Set-up is simple, and as long as your broadband connection is strong and consistent, the picture quality is good, and streaming is aid to be almost, but not quite, lag-free.

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Ever wonder what happens to videos removed from YouTube? Wonder no more, as the videos, pulled for various reasons, including copyright infringement now find a new home on YouTomb.

While the videos aren’t actually available to watch on YouTomb (that would kind of be illegal, and make YouTube’s removal policy pointless), the site does have screen shots, as well as tracking lots of other information.

MIT Research Project

YouTomb is a project by the folks at MIT Free Culture and it’s mission is to monitor how many videos are removed from YouTube, by who, and the reason for it.

Here on WebTVWire we’ve explored how YouTube is being used as a new playing field for many different things, from cries for help, to a place for gamers to show off.

And now, it’s being used a weapon of politicians to prove they are tech savvy and more down with the digital age of youngsters and technophiles.

Gordon Brown’s YouTube Question Time

10 Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister has had a YouTube channel for over a year, but Gordon Brown has now launched a new venture, a kind of YouTube version of Prime Minister’s question time.

He has pledged, in a video embedded below, to respond to questions posed through the official site, in what is being promised as a regular event.

2008 has so far proved to be a very mixed year for Web TV service Joost, but 5 months in and the company is still going strong and showing no signs of dying an early death.

An early demise was indeed what was being predicted back in January in the wake of the firing company’s chief technology officer Dirk-Willem van Gulik who joined the BBC to work on the iPlayer.

In March however, Joost offered a speck of hope to all those who would use the service if only it didn’t require a software download which hogs your computer’s resources.

Since the BBC iPlayer relaunched last Christmas, video on demand and streaming video usage has increased substantially in the UK, and there seemed to be no sign of that growth stopping.

However, it now appears from the latest figures released by the PlusNet ISP that the streaming growth is reaching a plateau or at least going through a period of non-activity.

The year started with a boom, and February saw 25% more streaming traffic per day than there was in January, a fact which caused many (though not PlusNet) ISPs to criticise the BBC for increasing their bandwidth costs.

Microsoft’s Mediaroom is currently the company’s IPTV solution which is used by AT&T U-Verse in the States and BT Vision in the UK, allowing TV to be delivered to your home over IP.

By the simple use of a set-top box, you can currently use the service to grab high quality HDTV that is of a much better quality than you would get using a Cable service.

Current Features

It currently also offers features such as quick channel changing, multi-room viewing, and picture-in-picture, but according to an article on Gizmodo, a lot more is coming soon.

The politicians fighting to replace George W. Bush in the White House have embraced the Web, new technology, social networking, and Web video completely in an effort to prove they are with it.

However, Bush himself clearly hasn’t been with it.

However, now that he’s on his way of the White House door, hopefully to be replaced by Barack Obama, he’s decided to embrace the medium and this week gave his first video interview intended purely for the Web.