YouTube has now made its live streaming plans official and said that it would start trials. It works through a user’s existing YouTube channel and works the same as services like Justin.tv, Qik or Ustream. Users just need a FireWire or USB video camera and have access to live comments for any ongoing show. It’s implied that finished shows will be archived as regular YouTube clips, though they don’t say it outright.

The testing started at 11AM Eastern today with a live broadcast of Rocketboom and will run through late Tuesday. YouTube hasn’t said when this will be a regular feature.

The BDP-N460 is the Sony Blu-ray player we’ve all been waiting for, but it’s missing a few important things. The most important being Wi-Fi. For $250 it streams video through Bravia Internet Video and that includes Netflix. In place of Wi-Fi, it features “specially designed” software for Linksys’s $100 Wi-Fi dongle. Ummm, that’s just not right Sony.

Once you add the $100 for the dongle, it’s about the same price as other Blu-Ray players on the market that actually have Wi-Fi.

There are many uses today for hard drives optimized for storing and streaming video files. Uses for this type of drive include DVRs, video work stations, and video surveillance applications. Hitachi has announced its latest video centric drive that is added to its CinemaStar line.

The new drive is called the CinemaStar C5K500 and is a 2.5-inch drive offering a maximum capacity of 500GB. The small drive is designed for silent operation, cool running, and low power usage. The rotational speed of the drive is 5400 rpm and is uses Hitachi SmoothStream technology to enhance digital video streaming applications.