Here’s a video of it in action, from Neowin...

As Techradar reports, there is no specific launch date set for Sky Player on Windows, but the company says it will be live by the end of the year. Sky’s VOD director Griff Parry said last week that the XBox deal wouldn’t be the last of its kind—last week, the company also said Sky Player would be available on FetchTV IPTV boxes made by IPVision.

Of course, it’s not free to watch Sky Player on any platform, but subscribers don’t normally need a Sky TV subscription to sign up. XBox users will need a regular TV subscription. And each new customer counts as one more on the road to the company’s goal of 10 million by 2010.

We should get an update on how close it is to fulfilling that 10-million-subscriber ambition—and perhaps how plans are progressing for a genuine VOD TV service using Sky+ boxes’ ethernet connections—in Sky’s Q3 earnings announcement on Friday morning. Last time out, Sky appeared to be benefiting from the recession with a 26 percent rise in profits in H208 to £388 million.