We may not have Netflix or Hulu for our BlackBerry PlayBooks yet, but there are some alternatives out there. One of these alternatives is a new app that was released today, called Movie Vault. While connected to wifi or tethered to your BlackBerry smartphone, you have access to over 900 classic movies, with more being added all the time. The movies are arranged by genre but you can also search by keyword, actor, title, director, and more. Movie Vault is integrated with IMDB for cover art and movie information including ratings, plot summary, and other details.

I like this app. It's laid out really well and is easy to navigate. I would like to see a children's category added just to make it easier to find movies that would appeal to my kids, but that's just me. All movies contained within the Movie Vault application are Public Domain works as classified under Creative Commons. You can pick up Movie Vault for $2.99, so why not pop up some popcorn, hook up the HDMI cables, and settle in for some good old fashioned family fun?

More information/screenshots and to purchase Movie Vault

The Vulkano Flow is the latest and greatest from Monsoon Multimedia in the Vulkano product line. The Flow allows the user to watch and control television programming they receive at home on their BlackBerry Smartphone, PC, Mac, and soon to their BlackBerry PlayBook.

Summary of Vulkano Flow features:

• Mark channels as favorite for quick access on your mobile phone
• Watch and control your live TV on the go via Wi-Fi or 3G
• Change channels just like at home
• Browse EPG for shows and episode descriptions
• Connect to all major TV sources - cable, DVD, satellite, DVR, TiVo
• Stream high-quality video at H.264 standards at 150kbps
• Connects to set-top box analog output and wirelessly to home router (802.11n)

The Vulkano Flow is similar to the Slingbox, but it is avaiable at a fraction of the cost. Continue reading to see what it has to offer.

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It has been quite some time since my intial post of Qik coming to the BlackBerry platform. Since then time, we've not really heard much from Qik in the way of updates. Even today, the version made available for BlackBerry devices hasn't even evolved into 1.0 yet, as it still remains sitting at version 0.1.15. With that little bit of history out of the way, I can say I was rather surprised when a longtime friend dropped me a message to say that version 0.1.17.2 was the current beta build being worked on by the folks at Qik.

Sporting a revamped UI and presumably more device support (I tested it on my 9700) the new Qik beta actually looks nice. They seem to have managed to make the application somewhat 5.0 compatible from what I can tell and while it still seems to actually have issues with streaming, it does manage to shoot, then upload videos just fine sometimes. Other times it turns out to be just a black video. Ideally, I'm sure we'd all actually like to see it actually stream from our devices as it does on other platforms but right now, I'm settling on the fact that they are still working on it. Anyone out there still want to see a Qik client for BlackBerry? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

One gripe often heard about BlackBerry smartphones anytime, anyone mentions YouTube and BlackBerry together is that YouTube streaming on BlackBerry looks like crap. At some point, last week Youtube seemed to increase the quality on their mobile site for BlackBerry devices. Many others have noticed this as well, in the forums and even on Twitter. I've seen this mentioned on more than one occasion in my Twitter stream by different individuals.

Some are attributing it to some optimization made through their YouTube accounts as described in the forums. However, having not tried this method myself I'm quite certain that isn't all there is to the story. Especially since my videos are looking much better without having done anything. Let us know in the polls folks.