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D-Link's New Boxee Box Runs Linux, Eyes Netflix
DeviceGuru writes "OpenBoxeeBox.com is reporting that D-Link's new DM-380 Boxee Box, demonstrated last night in New York at Boxee's Boxee Beta unveiling, runs Linux but does not yet stream Netflix video-on-demand titles. However, according to an unnamed Boxee insider, 'the goal is to have the device support Netflix.' The DM-380 features ports for HDMI, optical digital and analog audio, dual USB, and wired Ethernet, plus it has an SD card slot and built-in WiFi. Photos and screenshots are at OpenBoxeeBox, and additional details are on D-Link's website."
I aint trollin...
What? No Lotus notes and a machine gun?
This will never sell. It doesn't fit into the entertainment center paradigm. It looks like a puzzle box and a toy.
Too bad that thing is formed to take as much as space as possible, there is no way I get a permission from the mrs. to purchase one.
Boxee Box Beta Linux boxen botox begorah Batman! This could only be the work of the Riddler.
And what is so special on this? Most networking devices use Linux kernel as their OS to run all needed other features on it.
My 4 year old travel router (WL-520G if I remember correctly) has Linux on it. Same thing is on my 8 year old Telewell ADSL-modem.
The Linux might have a small marketshare by statics companies when it comes only to desktop use, but when it comes to real world usage statics... it has almost same market share as NT (NT 6.0/6.1 is the operating system on Windows Vista and Windows 7!).
Even my Digital TV -set has Linux in them. The DVD/VHS-recorder, 500GB DVB-T and DVB-C devices and even my cellphone has a Linux kernel working as the operating system. (And no, none of the Linux OS's rans the GNU software, so of course the RMS is angry about the fame what Linux has got because GNU did not got their own OS working).
Does anybody know about HD support, I know it has it but curious if it's limited to only 720p like the AppleTV or if it will display 1080i/p. And is there anything to stop me from installing XBMC on there. (I doubt there is but I'm not a big fan of boxee)
First thought. Gimmicky, not stackable and this is something that Tivo should have already done. Seems like a bunch of us had the same first impression too. Won't bode well.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Finally, Ronen notes that with the Beta release, Boxee's graphical engine has migrated from from OpenGL to DirectX, allowing it to take advantage of Direct X video acceleration.
So the "officially supported" OS X and Ubuntu versions will be running on OpenGL, but the Windows version gets full hardware acceleration by using DirectX?
This guy's the limit!
Is there anything out there like this that also does DTV/PVR?
I don't want to have multiple computers to maintain sitting around my TV set.
Oh, yeah, and it has to run Linux.
Thanks.
That's too bad. Otherwise this would have been a serious contender for my next media box.
It seems there's no "do-it-all" media center on the market. Games, Blu-Ray, XBMC. Pick any two. I'm waiting for someone to get XBMC going on a PS3. When that happens, I will have chosen my corner in this fight.
Doesn't Netflix use SILVERLIGHT?
Let's see:
1). BoxeeBox uses Linux.
2). Linux doesn't run Silverlight.
3). You need Silverlight to run Netflix
Now fill in the missing word:
Therefore, BoxeeBox will never be able to run ____________.
The truth is that I've given up on standard Linux distros when it comes to multimedia. It simply isn't as good as Windows or Mac OS X. For about a year, we tried to run Mythbuntu, then Ubuntu w/ MythTV and Boxee. It simply never worked very well. Incompatibility issues with drivers and configuration problems drove us up the wall. When Windows 7 came out, we "upgraded" to Windows 7. (Why not?, it was originally a Windows Vista box).
The problem I see with the Boxee Box is that it is competing against HDTVs that can connect with Netflix right out of the box. Plus, these HDTVs are better at displaying video than what Boxee will be able to do.
Don't get me wrong. I use Linux (Fedora Distro) at work. In fact, I installed it at work over my Windows box and am running Windows under VirtualBox on the machine. I prefer to do my development on Linux because it is faster, and it comes with all the development tools I need. Plus, it is two to three times faster running Subversion and Eclipse than Windows.
However, I have that Windows under VirtualBox instance if I have to read email (our corporation uses Exchange and Evolution is an awful Exchange client). I also use my Windows side if I have to display a video or a Flash application. If I can get Flash to work on Linux, it is splotchy at best, MP4s look awful, and don't even try to run in full screen mode. Linux based Android is much better, but that's because Google isn't shy about adding a few proprietary pieces to get things to work.
Boxee is a nice concept, but they're concentrating too much on cool and not enough on getting things to work at a consumer level.
Don't buy Blu-Ray until the DRM gets more fully defeated. When Blu-Ray becomes ready, there will be some BD library that developers will be able to use to read the discs, and people will be able to implement players without getting licenses that specify that the product is required to suck (which is why there currently aren't any good players), and then good players (all-in-one boxes, MythTV, etc) will finally appear on the market.
Until then, if you want high-definition movies, just let pirates deal with the hassles of Blu-Ray's flakiness, and you can download them with bittorrent. You'll end up with movies that just work, including with your own all-in-one box.
Save your money until Blu-Ray becomes a serious consumer-friendly product. Right now, it's a problem-plagued scam for suckers only.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Agree. Could never pass the WAF (wife acceptance factor). WTF?
And while I'm at it, could Apple please make a Mac Mini, AppleTV, whatever, that was the proper width for my stereo system? Or somebody make me a box I can put my Mac Mini into, and add a 3.5" SATA HD.... but I digress...
And the same fugliness applies to my friggin' silver, half-width cable box (black, please). This crap has got to go. Make it matte black and 17-1/8" (435mm) wide or it will look hideous on my AV rack. It's not rocket science.
Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number...and make that a little louder?
Seriously?
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
You've got it the wrong way around - once D-Link contrives a Linux solution for Netflix streaming, then we'll be able to stream Netflix to any Linux platform we like.
Yes, it's not possible now, but the Netflix streaming overlords might be more persuaded by a potential corporate partner than they are by the unwashed masses. I wish D-Link the best of luck in this effort!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Suicide... that's that the GP meant.
I have to use Notes at work as well, and I have experienced what you described (and worse). I believe the GP's approach is pithy and more efficient.
You've got it the wrong way around - once D-Link contrives a Linux solution for Netflix streaming, then we'll be able to stream Netflix to any Linux platform we like.
Yes, it's not possible now, but the Netflix streaming overlords might be more persuaded by a potential corporate partner than they are by the unwashed masses. I wish D-Link the best of luck in this effort!
Roku and Tivo both have Netflix on Linux. But it is not open source, so we still do not have it...
i watch hd encodes on both linux and windows same experiance but i have found vdpau in linux a benifit see watching a hd movie dont have to use your processor with vdpau linux cuda windows, it can use your video card and it plays hd's really well that way and your cpu usage at 0% and the reasoning why mplayer took out vdpau compatibility beats the hell out of me, stupid on there part. now i have to use vlc to use vdpau under linux and vlc has went a very long ways since the last time i used it. but vdpau is for nvidia 8 series or higher cards to tell you a truth i was expecting a drag or something running a hd encode 1080 x264 working that way, but played very smooth, video quality very good to. I dont know what a boxee is like ive never used one, but the thing is neat ive been wanting to do all of that on my tv, without the need of my pc and boxee is my answer and it beeing wifi is neat to i can move my files from my pc to boxee through wifi, im gonna buy one ive been wanting something like this for along time, but my curiosity theres something the linux one does that they wont reveal till the tech show, i cant wait to see im very curious, I love new technology and what it says it offers so far ill proudly spend 200 and not think twice about it and not regret it, and size doesnt matter for a brilliant idea. The netbook has proved that handsdown. Theres people who cant imagine a day without there netbook now even though they own a laptop, who would of thought something so small would be such a sucess, it fooled me, and again i dont cut nothing till i try it for myself and i love it. Netbooks are awesome. So beeing small dosnt matter for this boxee, its for what it does is unique and it will sell itself for that. btw i dont care about netflix that can be sent to your tv allready without a computer thats been done, but the linux boxee having netflix is just a plus nothing unique.
Marketing? Yeah right. The REAL issue will be SUPPORT. Having had to deal with D-Link support (both consumer and professional), I'd much rather be slowly eviscerated with a knitting needle.
And if it's something that can't be reduced to a cookie-cutter firmware setting with no options available, D-Link will fuck it up.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Popcorn Hour still looks better
I'm waiting for someone to get XBMC going on a PS3.
But don't hold your breath. It's technically possible, but it's going to be a lot difficult.
You see the PS3 isn't closed to homebrew development. Quite the countrary. You can even install Linux on it and develop whatever you want.
But there's a restriction, when running homebrew software, the hypervisor doesn't give access to the GPU.
You can program all the scientific number-crunching application you want, you have full access to the CELL SPU units for some crazy parallel computing. But no 3D GFX only limited to some basic 2D stuff (This is supposedly done that way by Sony, so evil pirate couldn't get to run pirated games using the homebrew mode).
So although it's greate for a lot of stuff, a PS3 can't get graphically intense homebrew software out-of-the-box.
And saddly, XBMC *is* a graphically intense application (requires hardware support to accelerate lots of the decoding steps).
Also, depending on where you live, the decription of blue ray's DRM might break you local stupid DMCA-like law.
I doubt that the PS3 Blueray official player key will be available to Homebrew developers (Sony fearing that this might make the PS3 a convenient Blue-ray ripping machine), and thus I suspect that using collections of extracted keys like BackupHD will be necessary.
Which should be legal in most jurisdiction which respect the fair-use exception, but not all.
So, we'll have to wait until Linux PS3 gets an OpenGL implementation which is accelerated on the CELL SPUs instead of the (restricted) GPU. Work is currently done in Gallium3D (the Next-Gen Mesa3D). Once this is finished, you'll have all the necessary acceleration, only running as custom software on the SPUs instead of shaders on the GPU.
Then it'll be only a matter of packaging a PS3 Linux with Gallium3D and XBMC.
(And maybe other software using OpenGL and VA API or VDPAU. As long as their requirement stay within what is achievable on a Cell's streaming units).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Take a look at the pics of that device. No, really: RTFA. That is one of the dumbest designs for consumer electronics gear I've ever seen. I looks like someone took a cube and hacked off about half of it at a completely random angle, and then laid it awkwardly on its cut side. I don't care what kind of multimedia experience this thing offers, I would not buy this thing simply for its stupid looks.
I wouldn't be caught dead with this thing in my living room and that's saying a lot since my entertainment center is a bunch of equipment stacked up on a fish tank stand.
Given that the mother project (XBMC) also switched to DirectX on win32 this is no surprise. It makes sense too - on Windows, you get much easier hardware acceleration of videos if you're using DirectX (i.e. you can get a DirectX surface out easier) You also tend to get better hardware support. It appears the Boxee gues worked with the XBMC team on this - kudos. Let's hope the boxee box is open enough to get XBMC on there.
I might have failed to express myself correctly :
I wasn't speaking about obtaining the files from a Blueray. That's also easy to do on PC.
I was speaking about the decryption of Bluerays' DRM (AACS encryption and BD+) with which the content of said files is encrypted.
As the PS3 plays Bluerays, it must have valid device keys into its firmware (or into some dedicated TPM-like chip).
(Just like, on PC, WinDVD and PowerDVD have similar keys).
Or do you mean that the way the PS3 is build, the Blueray drive can decrypt the AACS from files on-the-fly ?!?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]