Could Netflix be about to launch a set-top box?

Dave Zatz over at Zatz Not Funny thinks so, after the movie rental company that’s best known for putting DVDs in the post, updated its trademark filling to explicitly reference a set-top box that can download and deliver video content from the Internet directly to a television.

Zatz notes that this isn’t first time that talk of a Netflix set-top box has surfaced, which begin last April with the recruitment of Anthony Wood to the newly created position of VP of Internet TV. According to the press release issued at the time, Wood would be “responsible for all aspects of product development related to the company’s strategic intent to deliver movies directly to subscribers’ televisions via the Internet.” Prior to joining Neflix, Wood was CEO of Roku, the company behind the SoundBridge line of audio streaming devices, and before that he was founder of ReplayTV — no less — credited with being the creator of the digital video recorder (DVR). In other words, Wood has some serious hardware pedigree.

The BBC’s iPlayer (see our earlier review) will roll out a streaming option later this year, in a move that will finally make the UK-only TV catchup service available to Mac and Linux users, in addition to those using a Windows-based PC.

Described as a “strategic partnership”, by Erik Huggers, BBC future media and technology group controller, the new version of iPlayer will use Flash video technology from Adobe, and is said to compliment the existing Windows-only download version of the service, which utilizes Microsoft’s Windows Media software.

This post is part of Blog Action Day, where bloggers around the web are uniting to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind — the environment.

As the Internet has matured and reaches a more diverse audience, both physically and socially, it has become an efficient tool for the distribution of information on a wide range of topics. At the same time, the continuing improvements in bandwidth and video compression have allowed streaming video to become popular on the Internet. The culmination of these becomes evident when searching for Internet TV channels about the environment. Listed below are five of the best.