Amidst all of the CES buzz, there was an announcement about my most recent obsession, Boxee and the BoxeeBox. It seems that not only is the Boxee beta open to everyone now, but that the BoxeeBox itself is to have quite abit of power under the hood. Those who know me have had the unfortunate luck of having to hear me droll on and on about how much I love the up coming BoxeeBox.
Until today, all I had been waiting to hear was some news the hardware in the thing would be able to support 1080P HD video. In fact, now that the Tegra2 processor from Nvidia has been announced as the engine behind this little beast, I’m ready to put my name on the pre-order list for this little bad boy.
According to Engadget, the Tegra2 will be:
The new processor is a 40nm chip that’s supposedly much lower power than Atom and even Snapdragon, and can still do full HD streaming and HDMI out. Supported OS’s include Windows CE, Windows Mobile and Android, with Chrome OS on the drawing board — “hundreds” of test systems are out there, and devs can order their own test units this month.
And the press release from Nvidia on the same page:
Consumers have been waiting for a truly portable, high-resolution, no-compromise Internet experience. NVIDIA’s new Tegra processor delivers that by combining lightning-quick browsing, streaming 1080p video and Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 acceleration with an immersive 3D user interface and days of battery life.
Overall, this gives me hope that this device will finally ween me away from using my PS3 and having to transcode my high-resolution video through PS3MediaServer. While this has been a process that has worked well (for the most part) there are some issues with the process. A few videos play perfectly on their own, with a compatible player, but when transcoded will crash after several minutes. While these are most likely due to errors in the video files themselves, it is one that is not as apparent when played directly. The other issue is that transcoded videos cannot be searched through as easily as flat files.
These are limitations that are for the most part annoyances. However when coupled with my need to run Windows just so I can have PlayOn available to stream Netflix and Hulu to my PS3, the BoxeeBox becomes an even sexier choice.
What about Boxee itself?
Boxee itself is a really compelling piece of software. Not only does it provide a platform for me to play my video library, but more importantly, it is a full portal to an entire world of streamed Internet content. These are done through Boxee’s robust and very open app platform. A quick look through the beta shows just under 2 dozen current apps, including:
- Netflix – Online movie rentals
- CNN – News and world events
- Crackle – Sony’s online video service
- MLB.TV – Major League Baseball
- Pandora – Internet radio
- Last.fm – Internet radio
- Revision3 – Internet Television
- Flickr – Photo services
- MTV – Do I really need to say it?
- And many more
These are just the current launch offerings. The best part about Boxee to me, compared to its competitors, is that it is built with an open app platform. It is designed to encourage content providers to utilize the device in the way they want to. Meaning, you could subscribe to a paid service (like you do with Netflix) or a provider could build their app so that it is ad supported. This to me encourages more content to be delivered through this platform in the future as it is proven to be just as valuable a business model as broadcast television itself.
One little hidden gem that I found is that there is built-in support for finding and watching semi-current television. This is done by aggregating several sources, such as ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and even Hulu. This is all tucked away under the TV Show Library and has a very fluid interface for locating shows that are available and picking not only the episode to watch, but its source too.
In fact, I was quite surprised to see Hulu already supported under Boxee, after the huge trouble between them earlier last year. While the support itself is relatively limited, as you cannot search Hulu directly, the ability for them to create a full app later on that can be ad supported gives me hope that we will see full availability to this content. As soon as they can prove to their content providers that there is money to be made here that is.
Overall, I am just gushing about this announcement. Getting this device will finally finish my home theater media project, at least when it comes to hardware. According to D-Link, the BoxeeBox itself will be under $200, which is steal compared to the other HD quality streaming devices on the market. This is going to be a great year for digital media and internet enabled television. In fact, this will likely be the year that I drop cable completely.
As soon as I get my hands on the device (which may be several months away), I will be sure to given a full review of the setup and performance.
