The TV is the last screen in most people’s homes to be conquered by the Internet. Although with so many companies both big and small going after that screen—Google, Apple, Boxee, Roku—it seems like someone will eventually figure it out. Now you can add to that list Fanhattan, a new company spun off from Vuze, the maker of the popular Bittorrent client which has been downloaded 150 million times. Despite its origins, Fanhattan is built to please media companies and Hollywood studios as much as consumers.

Fanhattan combines a consistent, easy-to-navigate user interface with a deep database of movies and TV shows to make discovering videos from the Internet even simpler than finding them on cable TV. (Watch the demo below and my interview with CEO Gilles BianRosa). Fanhattan acquired TMDb, the Open Movie Database, which powers the search and browsing features of the service. TMDb will relaunch as Fanhattan on the Web in January, followed by Mac and PC clients. The company is in discussions with various device manufacturers and cable companies to integrate its video browsing interface in their products and services.

One of the big reasons Internet TV has been a bust so far is because it doesn’t fit squarely into any of the licensing windows the entertainment industry thrives on. Fanhattan is built around these licensing windows. When you search for a movie or TV show, it will list various places on the Internet where it can be found,ranging from free advertising-supported Websites to streaming rentals and paid downloads. Then you can choose where you want to get the video from, and watch it within Fanhattan’s consistent user interface.

The problem with Internet video, argues BianRosa, is that there are almost too many choices. You have all of these apps, but they all have their own UI, and their own search engine. If you know which movie you want to watch, you have to check half a dozen different providers.”

What TMDb provides is metadata to organize videos from across the Web. And it brings you information and trailers even if the movie just came out in theaters. For instance, let’s say you want to search for TRON Legacy. A summary of the movie would appear, along with a list of the actors and director. If you click on Jeff Bridges, then you can see his entire movie career and browse to other movies he’ starred in. Some of them might be available from Amazon or Netflix, and you can watch them if you pay. Fanhattan turns video on the Interent into a giant video-on-demand system.

You can also browse by genre, ratings, era, director or any of many other variables. TMDb is a structured database so it knows how movies are related to one another through actors, directors, and so forth. Fanhattan lets you browse along those axes with ease. Studios should love that feature because it exposes old movies from their libraries to new viewers.

Fanhattan will also manage music, photos, and other personal media, but its real sweet spot is videos. It is designed as a technology platform, however, so that other companies can build apps on top of it. A music service like Spotify, for instance, could have an app which pulled a soundtrack from a movie. For every movie, you can also imagine FanGear (T-shirts, coffee mugs, accessories) which could be purchased with one affiliate click. While the app will initially be free, Fanhattan may charge for premium versions in the future.

Earlier this month, I met with BianRosa in a New York City hotel, where he showed me a demo of the product. I shot some video with my iPhone, which I’ve embedded below. The lighting isn’t that great, but it gives you an idea of what the UI will look and feel like.

In the second video, BianRosa discusses what he is trying to accomplish with Fanhattan:

There’s a bit of a controversy in the BitTorrent community, friends. Two rather prominent, so-called private trackers, whose names I will not mention “just because,” have announced that they will be banning Vuze, the former Azureus, one of the elder statesmen of the BitTorrent protocol. Say what you will about the direction Vuze took—I hated it—but there isn’t a more powerful torrent client under the sun. Make no mistake about it: it is an important loss, and one of the bigger developments is the recently quiet world of BitTorrent.

The decision was taken because of the potential for Vuze to be tampered with—it was a hassle to ensure that Vuze stats were on the up and up. Nothing is more vital to the success of private BitTorrent sites than accurate stat tracking. What do you want, chaos?

It’s a valid complaint, to a point: you cannot run a BitTorrent site with the threat of users gaming the system. Private sites usually operate on the upload-to-download ratio system: you’re required to keep your ratio above a certain number in order to keep your account in good standing. So, you’ve uploaded 20GB of data and downloaded 15GB of data, giving you a ratio of 1.33. Now, if you were to somehow tamper with the way your BitTorrent client reports stats, you could rig it so that it looks like you’ve uploaded 50GB and downloaded only 10GB, the site would suffer.

How often that has actually happened, who knows? I do know this: if you’re tampering with your clients’ stats you should be deported.

The sites in question now recommend Windows users use uTorrent; Mac users uses Transmission or uTorrent; and Linux users use rTorrent. It’s a peculiar decision.

Popular because of its simplicity and small footprint, uTorrent is a closed-source application, and one point was linked with the MPAA and RIAA. You’d think that people who were engaging in wanton copyright infringement would be a little more prudent with their activities, but far be it from me to question people’s decision-making skills.

The Windows version of uTorrent is far more mature than the Mac version. One feature you won’t find in the Mac version of uTorrent is RSS, something that’s been around seemingly forever.

Transmission is another client that’s popular because of its small footprint. (If you’re seeding on a dedicated box, or have a system with a decent amount of memory, having a small footprint is essentially irrelevant. I used to run Azureus 24/7, and never noticed my machine slowing down.) Again, it’s on the simple side, so people who want to “set it and forget it” will be right at home.

I don’t know, it sounds like I’m pro-Vuze here. I don’t give a damn; I use Usenet for my escapades. I will say, I did the majority of my torrenting—I barely torrent these days—using Azureus/Vuze, so it’s a little sad to see it being pushed out like this.

Still, if it’s for the good of the sites in question, then so be it.

Those of you who stopped using Azureus when it mutated into Vuze may want to reconsider your decision. The BitTorrent client now supports video playback on the PS3 and Xbox 360. That is, once the computer on which Vuze is running and your PS3 or Xbox 360 are on the same network, Vuze will play the video and send it to your TV, no matter what file format the video is in. I just tried it out using my Xbox 360, and here’s what I found.

It stinks. Oh, sure, it was able to play plain ol’ DVD rips—24 Hour Party People, encoded with Xvid—just fine over my vanilla 802.11g wireless network, but that’s only because the Xbox 360 natively supports that video file format. I then tried to play two x264 MKVs—a 1080p Blu-ray rip of I Am Legend (hi-res screenshot) and a 720p TV rip of a recent episode of Lost (hi-res screenshot)—and all Vuze can do is wink coyly at me. A conversion bar sits there, and then Vuze does its best to convert the video into a format palatable to the Xbox 360. Fair enough, but if you think I’m going to wait nearly three hours just to see the stupid time-traveling exploits of Jack and John Locke, you’re sorely mistaken. (To convert I Am Legend, it would have taken 15+ hours.)

And I use the phrase “it stinks” because you know the average BitTorrent user just wants to drag and drop his illicitly obtained Blu-ray rips and watch them on something other than his MacBook. This Vuze solution just doesn’t work as well as I’d initially hoped.

So, it’s back to watching videos on my 20-inch iMac. It’s no IMAX, but at least I’m not waiting dozens of hours just to watch some dumb movie.

A neat feature if all you’re watching is Xvid-encoded DVD rips, but anything more than that is pushing it, I think. But, by all means, go ahead and try it yourself; maybe you’ll have a better experience.

BitTorrent-based video distribution service Vuze, which we last covered in June and was previously known as Azureus, has raised $20M in a Series C round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and joined by existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, BV Capital, and Jarl Mohn.

The round brings Vuze’s investment total to $34M after a Series A of $2M with BV Capital and a Series B of $12M with Redpoint, Greycroft, BV Capital, and Mohn. As part of this Series C, TiVo co-founder Mike Ramsay is joining Vuze’s board of directors.

The company says that it has reached an installation base of 15 million. Vuze users must install a downloadable client before they can begin loading (and seeding) TV and movie content from 100 content partners, including some bigger names such as the BBC and Showtime.

Vuze recently petitioned the FCC to restrict internet throttling by ISPs, a practiced which threatens the BitTorrent protocol on which the service depends.