The Boxee Box: It Ain't TV [Bit Rate - Multichannel News]
If you want YouTube videos on your high-def television, the developers at Boxee want to talk to you about their new tv peripheral - the Boxee Box. As readers recall, Boxee is an open source software product that is essentially a digital media guide that can be installed on a computer connected to a television. Boxee's software plays media that isn't protected by digital rights management and paid subscription media, like streaming Netflix movies.
In an attempt to bring Boxee to a wider audience, the company has worked with D-Link to produce a plug-and-play peripheral with the Boxee software already installed. Connect the Boxee Box to your television and your broadband, and you're ready to stream video. But, while Boxee is promoting the Box as a way to get free video without the need to subscribe to cable television, Todd Spangler has debunked those claims as marketing puffery in his post on the Box. Sure, you watch as many YouTube videos as you want via the Boxee Box, but to get the level of entertainment that most users want, you're going to need to pay for a subscription to a streaming service like Netflix.
It's an interesting concept, but with Hulu's video content blocked from Boxee users, there's very little quality content available for free for the Boxee Box. The Box has a planned retail release in the second quarter of next year.
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