- Orange TV: Orange’s UK IPTV service still shows no signs of emerging from testing. The service already operates in France, Poland and Spain and had promised a 2007 UK launch but that was pushed back to this year. At last week’s IPTV World Forum, digital TV director Tim Pearson (NYSE: PSO) could only point to the idents released last September and say: “Full roll-out will be some time this year” (via Light Reading). “French consumers are different to those in the UK, so the service needs some finessing.”

- Channel 4: Nevermind Kangaroo; C4 is putting shows like Black Books, Spaced and Peep Show on iTunes Store to download at a cost of around £1.89 each. Why anyone would want to pay that much for archive episodes, when C4 has of late experimented with both ad-supported online and free VOD TV, is a worthwhile question, but this expands the available UK programming on the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) service that had been sorely lacking it until BBC Worldwide’s recent similar additions.

- Blinkx Beat: Although most of the video space is moving to the web, web video search index Blinkx is launching Blinkx Beat, a Windows desktop client that shows viewers the news, entertainment, sports, business and other video in its catalogue. The video, from Blinkx’s 220-plus content partners, can comprise personalisable channels. Release.

- EU connections: Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and France all lead the US on broadband penetration, according to the European Commission’s 13th Progress Report on the Single Telecoms Market, out today. The US is on 22.1 percent. Europe added 19 million broadband lines in 2007. More here.