The BBC Worldwide is bringing short video clips from programs such as “Doctor Who”, “Red Dwarf”, and “The Mighty Boosh” to MySpaceTV.

The deal brings current and archived video content from BBC Worldwide programs to a MySpaceTV channel. The programming is available globally. As Mashable notes — and we must agree — the BBC site on MySpaceTV looks great. It’s more BBC than MySpace.

HBO is the latest U.S. television network to jump on the Internet TV bandwagon, albeit with a rather cautious approach.

The new service, dubbed “HBO on Broadband”, will be offered free of change to existing HBO subscribers only, and initially you’ll need to be served by the Wisconsin division of Time Warner Cable, and a user of their “Road Runner” high speed broadband service.

Over 600 HBO movies and shows will be made available each month, reports DVD Dossier, although most content will expire after four weeks. January’s lineup includes “We Are Marshall,” “Norbit,” “Breach,” “Smokin’ Aces,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Superman Returns,” “The Last King of Scotland” and the documentary “Baghdad Hospital: Inside The Red Zone.”

The New York Times provides a good overview of the challenges Apple — or any company — faces to deliver a European-wide online movie rental service.

“Apple will have to confront legal and regulatory hurdles, copyright challenges, scheduling conflicts and technological issues, reminders that the European media landscape remains a patchwork of individual countries, rather than the single market that the European Commission envisions”, notes the report.

Give TiVo points for continuing to improve its service for subscribers, and while you’re at it throw in a clove cigarette or two.

TiVo has struck a deal with Jaman, the peer-to-peer Web movie service, to bring its catalogue of American indie and international films directly to its set-top box. Think Oscar-nominated “Paheli”, “Loverboy” (Sundance), “All About Lily Chou-Chou” (Berlin International Film Festival), and “La Promesse” (Cannes) — movies that you’d have a hard time finding anywhere else. Ah, subtitled films.

Movie rentals on iTunes could pave the way for content from the BBC’s catch-up service, iPlayer, being offered on Apple’s platform, according to the broadcaster’s Future Media and Technology Director, Ashley Highfield.

Writing on the BBC Internet blog, Highfield says that Apple’s re-launch of the AppleTV (no computer required) is “encouraging” and, furthermore, the BBC could potentially piggyback on Apple’s newly announced movie rental offering, to deliver iPlayer content through iTunes.

In Steve Jobs’ mind, version 1 of the AppleTV failed to resonate with consumers because of its slavish reliance on the PC.

At last year’s D: Conference, when downgrading the device to the company’s “hobby”, Jobs told Walt Mossberg: “Coming from the PC market you first think about getting content from your PC to your living-room. I’m not sure that’s really what most consumers want”.

With AppleTV “take 2”, the chains are off so to speak. No longer does the device require the use of a computer to download and manage content (although it can still access media stored on a PC), and is instead capable of fetching content directly from the Internet– movie rentals; film, TV and music purchases; podcasts; and photos.

But aside from Apple-sanctioned access: the company’s own iTunes Store and .Mac service, podcasts, Flickr and YouTube — the AppleTV remains under lock and key, closed to third-party developers and web services, and subsequently unable to pull in additional content from elsewhere on the net.

During today’s Macworld keynote, Steve Jobs confirmed that Apple is adding movie rentals to its iTunes Store, entering a crowded market that includes similar services from major players, Microsoft (XBox Live), Netflix (Watch Instantly) and Amazon (UnBox), along with upstarts such as Vudu. However, for any new online movie rental service to succeed it will have to compete with traditional DVD rentals and illegal downloads — and to do so, must pass three basic tests: Content, pricing, and convenience. So how does Apple fare?