Boxee Set-Top Box Is On The Way: Watch Out, Cable Companies
Boxee has been on a wild, wild ride since debuting to the world last
year, and for those looking for new ways to catch more content online,
it has become the go-too application. And while it has certainly taken
off, there's still lots of room to grow. One of the main reasons that
it has yet to become a household name outside of the tech community is
the need to have a full fledged PC to run it. And unless you're looking
to hook up a media PC/HTPC in your den, you're probably not going to
see Boxee in your living room.
At least, that was the case up until this week. Out of nowhere, Boxee announced that it has located its first-ever hardware partner, which basically means that some sort of Boxee set-top box is on the way. Boxee has informed us that more details will be provided on December 7th when it reveals its first Beta software. Unfortunately, that means that little is known about the box right now. We're guessing that it'll be something like the Roku box or the Apple TV, but only time will tell what the actual design is like. However, obviously there are any number of small form-factor platforms available on the market today to get this done for the folks at Boxee - perhaps an NVIDIA Ion-based system might do the trick? In fact, the mock below looks a lot like an Acer Aspire Revo or maybe it's based on something a bit more powerful?
What could be possibly more important for Boxee is another small (but big) announcement. We're told that the Boxee software could eventually be embedded onto other devices. That means that your DVD player, DVR or even Blu-ray player could one day have access to Boxee, similar to how some devices already have access to Vudu and Netflix right now. Cable companies best watch out--things are about to get really, really interesting.
At least, that was the case up until this week. Out of nowhere, Boxee announced that it has located its first-ever hardware partner, which basically means that some sort of Boxee set-top box is on the way. Boxee has informed us that more details will be provided on December 7th when it reveals its first Beta software. Unfortunately, that means that little is known about the box right now. We're guessing that it'll be something like the Roku box or the Apple TV, but only time will tell what the actual design is like. However, obviously there are any number of small form-factor platforms available on the market today to get this done for the folks at Boxee - perhaps an NVIDIA Ion-based system might do the trick? In fact, the mock below looks a lot like an Acer Aspire Revo or maybe it's based on something a bit more powerful?
What could be possibly more important for Boxee is another small (but big) announcement. We're told that the Boxee software could eventually be embedded onto other devices. That means that your DVD player, DVR or even Blu-ray player could one day have access to Boxee, similar to how some devices already have access to Vudu and Netflix right now. Cable companies best watch out--things are about to get really, really interesting.
