It’s available over at Graphicall.
Well, they haven’t officially released a beta so this is jumping the gun a bit…
Yeah its nice…
Anyone know when it’s comming officially?
I thought it was planned for last week…
I had thought this too, but they had 2.53 builds and an announcement and I thought I may as well post it up for discussion.
Maybe they are making the feature list atm and it’s taking them longer then they expected? 
Just did a build of this about hour ago:
http://www.netactivesolutions.net/blender25/
Download zipped file - Blender25_win32_svn30548_inc_Luxblend.zip ( about 33mb )
This includes LUXBLEND for Luxrender. Look here for details to get this running - Post 8 at this thread:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=192077
Aidan
So this is the beta? Final first beta? This is what they will put on the official site?
Vali,
Are you asking me? If so, no, the build I just posted I made today, I have no doubt even by now - it is out of date a bit. BUT if you want to download - it installs into its own folder and wont wreck your PC 
- Its standalone! - Download, unzip, try, delete!
Aidan
Yes the beta is on it’s way, it will soon be available officially:
Svn is updated, the release code has been upped to 253. So we can get
the compile machines running!
I’d like to ask everyone to stop committing in trunk until we have
confirmation from the release builders that things are OK for them.
Only crucial fixes should go to svn now. Please use #blendercoders IRC
for urgent feedback.
While writing this, I already get two amendments in. Daniel Salazar
found sculpt issues, Andrea Weikert likes to fix two small but
important path issues.
Updates will be following here…
-Ton-
BTW: The filenames for the builds can be like blender-2.53-beta-OS-
blah.zip.
Here is the new splash screen:
I would have chosen a more epic splash screen…
Like the Sintel against the big dragon one…
No, no that’ll be for the final.
This is the part where the wise developer is giving Blender it’s prep talk, he is telling her that she must be patient and that all good things come to those who wait and that one day she will fight her enemies and be triumphant…
Can’t see that for OSX at GraphicAll… Wich is the OSX build number?
Makes sense.
Well even if it is beta 3, rendering wise it’s slooooowwwww
Beta isn’t official yet, a few more last minute fixes need to be done.
If you know how to use the software ‘correctly’ and ‘efficiently’ it’s actually quite fast.
Why 2.53? I know 2.52 has been mentioned, but I thought it was by mistake, instead of 2.5.2 (2.50.2). Or am I completely wrong? 
It’ll be 2.5.3 I believe, it’s just easier to say 2.52, and 2.53 etcetera. I think anyway, I could be wrong.
Sweet. Although I’ll wait until they officially release it on the homepage.
EDIT: Will Bmesh be implemented into this release?