Boxee Box Opts For Intel CE4100 SOC

[Mike Garcen]

Original Article Link

pretty interesting and there’s some good information on the Intel chip from Anandtech if you want a bit of background. The box will be able to bit stream, which is good. I’m still excited for it 🙂

[Anonymous]

Just being honest here – I would be a LOT more excited if this were for MediaCenter – a platform that actually needs a good extender.  OR if Boxee did DVR that.  As it stands I stick with SageTV which has both even with it’s warts

[Andrew Van Til]

Personally I completely agree, but there is a large segment of the market that doesn’t need DVR functionality and just want a streamer that works but doesn’t look like a DLNA browser.

I’m also interested in the potential to buy one of these and use it as a client PC 🙂

[robinhoody]

the price of 229$, or the street price of 200$ why not buy a dell zino?  its only a few bucks more plus you can stick the boxee software on the zino.  Sure it wouldnt be a speedy HTPC but you could do much more with it.

[Andrew Van Til]

Form factor and geek appeal.

[Mike Garcen]

i think the idea of the Box is that as content producers continue to evolve, they will essentially make null the need for a DVR, since all the content on TV’s will be available via the internet somehow.

how much that comes together has yet to be seen, but i wouldn’t be surprised to see some awesome premium partnerships exclusive to the Boxee Box when it’s released. (hey, the box has to offer SOMETHING extra, right? Otherwise Robinhoody’s got a good point)

[Crim]

[quote=”babgvant”]
Form factor and geek appeal.
[/quote]
Geeks aren’t the people this thing is aimed at. Geeks would pay a little more and get a Zino.

[Andrew Van Til]

[quote=”Crim”]
Geeks aren’t the people this thing is aimed at. Geeks would pay a little more and get a Zino.
[/quote]

1) I disagree.  If it weren’t aimed at geeks they wouldn’t have swapped out the Tegra for a more capable SOC.  Non-geeks don’t care about high bit-rate AVC decoding; the Apple TV a perfect e.g. of a device targeted at that demographic.

2) You missed the context of that statement.  It was in reference to the hackability of the device, now that it’s x86 based it would be much easier to repurpose into a nice little Myth client for e.g..

[Mike Garcen]

i don’t think Boxee took for granted how popular the AppleTV box was (as underpowered as it was) specifically for the reason that it could be hackable. This thing’s not going to consume much power at all, and it’s going to have a TON of potential, Boxee aside i think. 

And i agree, i think it is for geeks. Non-geeks will probably A) Not like the form factor and B) Just prefer to go with the AppleTv that’s $100 less and they’re familiar with it.

[Author]

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