Let me be honest: Boxee Box gets me excited. It should be everything PopBox wanted to be but unfortunately couldn’t: A universal media streamer box that not only play everything under the sun (and under your network shares) but also a box that offers an open development environment, Flash 10.1 support so every conceivable web client can be implemented for every popular Internet streaming service.
I’ll start by describing how I currently watch content. I can’t unplug my Dish Network system yet because there is no replacement yet in terms of HD content available (and there are the local news…). My (legal) DVD collection is ripped neatly and stored on my home server (Windows Server 2008) and I am using a Home Theater PC (Windows 7 + Media Browser + SSD) in the living-room to consume the content. In the bedroom, I have a small WD TV Live Plus media streamer box that does pretty much what the HTPC does but with a way less polished interface, no movie database, metadata display, etc. However it is completely silent, wide CODEC support and uses far less electricity than my quad core HTPC.
The problem is, I am not completely satisfied with either solution - the HTPC using Windows Media Center is eye candy but slightly noisy and a power hog. The Western Digital WD TV Live Plus while in my opinion the best media streamer box currently available for the money, has a horrific interface, it is not very often updated and implements few of the popular web clients with no prospect to add many more in the future.
That being said, Boxee Box uses the already popular Boxee software (a fork from the famous XBMC) and supports pretty much everything popular on the web today including YouTube, Pandora, CNN, Flickr, FaceBook and other 400 clients or applications at launch. It also supports UPNP (DLNA) and virtually every popular codec available and, best of all, it has a QWERTY remote control. It is a system integrator dream and, while not the cheapest box (you can pre-order it now for $200 at Amazon) it promises to replace every OTHER box. And here we open the can of worms – PROMISES. Netflix support is still not yet official although there seem to be negotiations between Intel (Boxee Box technology provider), D-Link (Boxee Box manufacturer) and Netflix (the main culprit). The problem is, Netflix is de facto power in movie streaming and they are hugely popular. I did not see statistics but I am willing to bet a regular family uses Netflix as much as all other methods of streaming video combined. If this is true, Boxee Box will never become mainstream without Netflix support (even Apple TV supports Netflix streaming, and they are not supporting much else of anything).
I pre-ordered Boxee Box from Amazon and I will post a full review when I receive it. However, without Netflix, I just don’t see it as more than a box oriented toward technology lovers and, as many as we are, we are far from being mainstream. And we need to remember the miserable failure of an equally long awaited similar product – PopBox.
Boxee Box Netflix Update (11-10-2010) – It is a great news that Boxee Box will actually support Netflix by the end of the year, it is confirmed! Hulu Plus will also come and VUDU was already announced.
