With CEO Steve Jobs describing Apple’s set-top-box, AppleTV, as a DVD player for the Internet age, it should come as no surprise that movie rentals could soon find their way onto iTunes, putting the company’s video download service in direct competition with other online movie rental services including Netflix, Movielink, Microsoft’s Xbox Live, and Amazon’s Unbox — along with a plethora of cable and satellite Video-On-Demand offerings.

Sling Media, the makers of SlingBox — a device which connects to a home’s TV signal (cable box, digital tuner or PVR) and then ’slings’ that signal over a broadband connection to either a PC or cell phone — has signed a deal to partner with the National Hockey League.

Babelgum, the p2p online video service which is inevitably being compared to Joost (see our preview) is to begin opening its Beta to the public. Existing testers can now invite others, and the company’s website is offering sign-ups on a limited first come first served basis, each day.

From the official Babelgum blog:

It has taken a few more days than expected but we are finally there! Today we are launching our open beta phase, with a brand new release of the Babelgum client, involving a major rewrite to improve performance and several new features. The release will also showcase hundreds of hours of content, with much more to come in the next few weeks.

Previously, we’d noted that Babelgum seemed a lot further behind in the development cycle than Joost, and while today’s update means they’re catching up, it still looks like they have a long way to go to match Joost’s volume of content. Although we also observed that Babelgum maybe embracing more of a niche and open content strategy.

Where Joost has made much of its success in signing up big media partners including MTV, Comedy Central, CNN, Sony Pictures, and CBS; Babelgum’s website hints at a different strategy. By helping niche content find and connect with niche audiences, the company hopes to exploit the “Long Tail”.

If you’d like to get your hands on Babelgum you can try your luck on the site’s download lottery, which the company says is necessary to keep “growth pace under control” until they’ve tested their new infrastructure and feel confident enough “to fully open the download floodgates.”

Earlier in the week Joost, the online TV service from the founders of Skype (see our review), appointed a new CEO — ex-Cisco executive Mike Volpi. Considered by the tech industry as a rising star at Cisco, it seemed natural to ask what Volpi “the router guy” could bring to Joost, a product that is all about software, and perhaps more importantly, content.

When Steve Jobs demoed the AppleTV’s new YouTube functionality at this week’s D: All Things Digital conference, host Walt Mossberg inevitably asked about picture quality, noting that YouTube content doesn’t always look that great on a PC let alone a big screen television. “The biggest thing that limits the quality is the source…”, replied Jobs. “You get what you get.” Or in the AppleTV’s case, you get what Jobs gives you.

Perhaps leveraging Apple’s ‘special’ relationship with Google (who acquired the video sharing site late last year, and whose CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board), Steve Jobs has managed to get YouTube to re-encode their entire back catalogue using the higher quality — and AppleTV compatible — H.264 codec, rather than make do with Flash.

At yesterday’s D: All Things Digital conference Real announced a new version of their streaming video player ‘RealPlayer’, which aims to be like ‘TiVo’ for the web. The new version which will be out in Beta later in the month (PC only, with a Mac version to follow “later in the year”) will enable users to download or ‘record’ any video on a website where the content isn’t copy protected.

When a user visits a website with embedded video (Real, Flash, QuickTime or Windows Media), a floating tab appears giving them the option to download the file or ‘record’ it in the case of a live stream. Users can then burn the video onto a VideoCD or if they upgrade to the paid version (RealPlayer Plus) they can create a DVD. The legality of this new feature is bound to be tested once it’s released, as downloading and storing video from sites like YouTube may actually break their Terms of Service.