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Equinux has announced the release of The Tube 2.7, a new update to its television recording software that accompanies its own TubeStick TV interface. Equinux makes the TubeStick in variants for European and North American digital TV.

The Tube enables TubeStick users to pause (timeshift) live television, record shows they want to view later, access an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to find out when shows they want to watch are on, and view television remotely over the Internet using the TubeToGo Web service.

The new 2.7 release now supports "placeshifting." Using iChat, you can drag a The Tube icon onto an active video chat to stream video on your TubeStick to friends using iChat Theater. Attendees can also record video clips of the show being shared.

You can also subscribe to a TubeToGo podcast of TV recordings. It works in conjunction with iTunes and RSS syndication feeds. You can add your own individual entries to EPGs through iCal, and be reminded of when podcasts are set to start.

Users of Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" also gain some improvements. The Tube can add a stack of your recordings to the Dock and they can be previewed using Leopard's QuickLook feature. The Tube now uses Core Graphics animation throughout its interface and can exclude its recordings from Time Machine backups, to save space if necessary.

System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.4 or later, G5/1.6GHz or faster (including Intel), 512MB RAM, 2GB hard disk storage, USB 2.0 port and a TubeStick DVR device.