Like the idea of Apple TV but feel the hardware is a little expensive? Today Sky releases its Now TV Box to UK fans for the ultra-low price of £9.99. This is significantly cheaper than Apple's flagship streaming device, and even manages to undercut Google's Chromecast. With the price tag including not just the device itself, but also delivery, there's got to be a catch, right?

The WiFi streaming box provides access to on-demand content from the broadcasters such as Sky, BBC and Channel 5, including sports and movies. There's also the option of using apps such as Spotify and Facebook to transform a regular TV into a smart TV. So far, so couch potato.

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Consuming digital media can be an overwhelming affair nowadays. There are too many devices on the market that do similar things but in different ways. There is the Apple TV, Roku, Blu-Ray Players, smart TVs and more. When Google announced the Chromecast, I was a bit skeptical -- surely I didn't need yet another device. However, the low price of the product ($35) and the fear of it selling out caused me to order it anyway.

When it arrived, I was shocked by just how small the packaging was. Upon opening the little box (OK, tearing into it) I was presented with the Chromecast. The device looks like a very fat flash-drive with an HDMI plug instead of USB. Also in the box was an HDMI extender cable, micro-USB cable and AC power adapter.

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A move to close down NSA surveillance of US phone records bites the dust after a vote at the House of Representatives. The closely fought battle ended with a nail-bitingly tight vote that saw 217 votes against limiting the Agency's data collection abilities and 205 for.

Republican Justin Amash looked to end the indiscriminate collecting of phone records that was brought to light by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Rather than looking to simply stop the NSA's actions, the proposed amendment took a slightly different approach and aimed to block funding instead.

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The PC world is packed with audio players of every type, which makes it difficult for smaller contenders to stand out from the crowd. Andreas Argirakis has done better than most with his BZR Player, though, thanks to a very simple strategy: he’s implemented support for just about every audio format you’ve ever heard of, and many more you haven’t, meaning the player now supports more than 480 file types in total.

The program doesn’t just open the regular formats, then: MP3, WMA, FLAC, OGG and so on. It also handles all kinds of game and hardware-specific formats, with the supported list including "Baldur’s Gate -- Dark Alliance", "Bio Hazard 2", "Conflict -- Desert Storm 1 & 2", EA formats, Nintendo GBS, NSF and NSFE files, and the list goes on.

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Filtering web content is always something of a sticky topic, and there are two very vocal sides to the argument. In the blue corner (red and blue are not being used in a political sense here -- if only because the blue represents right-wing parties in the UK and the more left-leaning in the US) we have those who advocate freedom of speech online, the right for anyone to say whatever he or she wants. In the red corner are those who feel that there is a need for policing, control and regulation.

It is certainly a difficult balance to strike. It would be all but impossible to draw a baseline level of sensibilities that should be catered to -- whatever form of control may be put in place will be seen as draconian in its severity by some, and pathetically lenient by others.

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I purchased a Google TV back in February and hoped for the best. My bet paid off as the tiny box became the hub of my living room, though not without complications -- it does require the occasional reboot. Still, for $99 I can not complain, and will sing its praises, as I filter all of our TV watching enjoyment through it.

Now the Plex server-app has rolled out new updates that bring even more functionality to the little service. Today the company announces a slew of updates that bring better compatibility with large screens, as well as new layout settings.

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PlayOn, the TV service that aims to make cord-cutting even more possible, with affordable prices, and even going free to Google TV customers, is now aiming at Blackberry users in both the United States and Canada. It brings with it all sorts of video goodies for this ride.

Today the company announces that "for the first time, BlackBerry 10 customers in the US and Canada can watch content from Hulu, Netflix and HBO GO on their smartphone. By downloading the new PlayOn app to a BlackBerry Z10 or BlackBerry Q10 smartphone, and PlayOn software to a Windows PC, customers can stream online content from Netflix, Hulu (with no Hulu Plus subscription needed), HBO GO, CBS and 60 additional online channels to their smartphone".

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Alex Thuring has released DVDStyler  v2.5, a major new version of his open-source, cross-platform DVD authoring tool. DVDStyler makes it possible to create video DVDs from a wide range of movie formats, including most common ones, and comes with full menu-creation tools for crafting the perfect video DVD.

Version 2.5, also available in portable form for Windows PCs, comes with a number of notable new features, including support for video files without audio streams, new frame spinning controls and redesigned chapters and cell properties dialog boxes.

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Understanding how your digital photo collection is laid out normally requires just a few moments of thumbnail browsing. Click a folder here, another over there, and you’ll quickly be able to locate the pictures you need.

If the folders aren’t accessible, though -- they’re on a CD, say, or you want friends to get a quick overview of an image set -- then it can be useful to generate a contact sheet, another image with thumbnails of your folder contents. And that’s where the free Snap2Img comes in.

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Romanian developer Chris P.C. has released ChrisPC Free VideoTube Downloader 5.0, a major new version of its free video downloader and converter tool for Windows. The tool sports a slight name change -- it was previously called ChrisTV YouTube Downloader -- but adds a number of new features to its roster.

The major new feature is an option to add an entire YouTube channel or user video list to the program’s queue for downloading and converting to a different format. Note that the free version only supports up to 15 files at any one time.

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Explore any Windows application and you might find some content you’d like to use elsewhere: the soundtrack in a game, an introductory video somewhere, maybe a few embedded images or icons. Sometimes these might be available as separate files in the program’s folders, but often they’ll come packaged in a DLL or some other library format which can’t be accessed as easily.

You could then turn to a more specialist solution, perhaps something which allows you to view and work with the resources in a Windows executable. But if that sounds too complicated, there’s always X-Ripper, a free tool that can extract images, audio and video content from any file type.

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From watching movies to editing videos, organising photos or burning discs, everyone needs quality multimedia software. This can be very expensive, though, so you will probably only wish to purchase the bare minimum of tools, just the core essentials that you really need.

There is another option, though. Buying CyberLink Media Suite 11 Ultimate will get you 15 of software's best multimedia apps – playback tools, including audio, photo and video editors; disc authoring apps, media organisers, sharing tools and more.

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In 2008, Boxee started out with just an app. In those early days it could be used on computers and Apple TV, but soon the company launched its own set-top box. That endeavor was lost in the noise of competitors like Roku and Google TV, but now the little media-oriented Boxee may have found a new road and its savior from oblivion.

News breaks that Samsung, the electronics maker behind the Galaxy lineup of Android devices and many popular smart TV's and other devices, snapped up Boxee. Since there is no official announcement made by either party, I reached out to Samsung for a statement.

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The apartment was strangely silent last night and darker than usual. Gone was the flickering light filling the center room as one of us scanned the program guide. A year later than planned, we dismantled the TV shrine and took back the living room from the false idol. Henceforth, we will worship at a different altar. Finally, I cut cable's cord -- IPTV, really, but we all call it the other, eh?

I feel anxiety and elation at the dramatic change, which allowed us to rearrange the furniture such that the living room is more open, more inviting and more suited to entertaining real people. The television now resides in the bedroom, more for the benefit of my wife's sleepless nights (the thing is narcotic). We'll stream from Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix primarily -- haha, maybe even iTunes. I had planned Google Play by way of Nexus Q, but the search giant nixes that option.

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CyberLink has released Media Suite 11, its all-in-one multimedia solution for media playback, content creation and disc burning.

New additions this time include photo workflow application PhotoDirector 11, as well as three Windows 8 apps (PowerDVD Mobile, PowerDirector Mobile, PhotoDirector Mobile). And of course the other bundled applications have been upgraded to the latest builds.

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