Over at TechCrunch Europe I’ve written about 3view, a UK startup which is about to launch a new Internet-connected set-top box. The two headline features of the device are support for Freeview HD, the free-to-air terrestrial high definition service rolling out to British households this summer, and Sky Player, the satellite broadcaster’s IPTV service.

The 3view set-top features twin DVB-T2 HD tuners and a 500GB hard drive for PVR capability. Ethernet is used to connect the box to a broadband connection.

On the software-side, the device is powered by a version of Linux. Opera 10 is used for web browsing and widgets, such as news, Facebook, Twitter etc., while Microsoft’s Silverlight enables streaming services such as Sky Player, including Silverlight HD, which in the demo I was shown, looks really impressive.

There’s also wide-ranging codec support for video, including Windows Media DRM, photos and music playback. Content can be accessed via a USB memory stick, on the device’s internal hard drive or over a local network – either another 3view box or a PC/Mac or any device that supports the DLNA standard.

There’s a YouTube app too, built using the video sharing site’s public API. And BBC iPlayer support is also planned once the public broadcaster updates the way it makes its streams available to third-parties.

Read the full article over at TechCrunch Europe.

3view, Silverlight, Sky Player