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Move Over BoxeeBox, Here Comes PopBox
DeviceGuru writes "Following closely on the heels of the December announcement of D-Link's BoxeeBox, Syabas Technology today said it will ship the PopBox, a $129 Internet-based A/V streaming set-top box (STB) in March. Both new gadgets have the potential to give Roku's popular STB a run for its money. All three boxes can deliver a range of Internet-based A/V streaming and social networking services to consumers' TVs. Like Roku's digital video player STB, the PopBox will include Netflix on-demand video streaming when it first ships. D-Link, meanwhile, is rumored to be scrambling to add Netflix streaming support to its BoxeeBox device as well, prior to inaugural shipments of that device. All three run embedded Linux OSes, and all are expected to sell for less than $200."
I just got a roku for my parents, and at $100 it does what it needs to just fine. I can see Roku easily adding a USB port and "Media" channel to a future box without touching the pricepoint and doing the same thing all of these other boxes do.
Oh and it doesn't look like that stupid melted cube that D-link is trying to sell.
Why the hell can't I get Netflix working on my laptop running Linux? How are these guys doing it, why isn't it available for the rest of us?
Netflix is the only reason I have VirtualBox installed.
I must be way ahead of the curve because I already have a device that can stream netflix, run boxee, xbmc, act as a media server, etc. It's called a computer. You can get one for very little money these days, even with hdmi output for use as a htpc. They do a lot of cool stuff!
We picked up a Samsung BD-P1590 as a replacement for our aging DVD player over the holidays...
It plays DVDs, obviously... As well as blu-ray discs... And it can stream stuff from Blockbuster, Netflix, Pandora, and YouTube. We got ours for about $150 at WalMart, but I'm told they can be had for as little as $80 if you're willing to shop around a bit.
I guess I'm just wondering why you'd buy a Roku for $80 or one of these PopBoxes for $130 just to stream Netflix.
Yes, the PopBox can stream all sorts of other stuff... Plenty of stuff that my new Samsung can't... But what's being advertised as the "killer app" is Netflix support.
In fact, if you look around a bit, there's plenty of hardware out there that can stream Netflix. All sorts of Netflix-enabled televisions and boxes. So I'm having a hard time seeing Netflix support as the "killer app" they're making it out to be...
On a somewhat unrelated note: Has anyone else noticed that broadcast television seems to be rapidly disappearing? We've got boxes that let us stream what we want, when we want it, from various web pages... We've got televisions that are able to stream content right from sites like Netflix... And we've got DVRs to download, record, and time-shift everything else... How long do you suppose it'll be before there's no such thing as "broadcast" television and it's all downloaded/streamed from your local affiliate's website?
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
My PS3 can stream Netflix and stream video from my PC, at 1080p with 7.1 audio. And it can play BluRay and upscale regular DVDs. Oh and there are some games. Doesn't cost much more than these others and has a very nice user experience.
Why not just get one of them? Hopefully not because it doesn't run Linux.
avoid the c200 pch. I have one. its buggy as hell.
development has ceased (for all practical purposes) on the older models. they abandoned them ;(
the company does not have any US engineering and ALL firmware (and hardware, which also has bugs!) is designed overseas. its shows (sorry).
if you can afford to KEEP replacing the shitty PSU in the c200 (it blows on a large percent of owners) then fine. else, you may want to wait for some other box designed by a company with a higher clue factor (so far, none are that much better though, sigh).
c200 is just not worth its price. highly overpriced and you will be a beta tester for at least the next year and a half before it does all it claims it will.
(owner of 2 pch products. fwiw.)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Living in an area with poor over-the-air digital TV reception, my daughter had to make the financial choice between broadband and cable TV. Wisely, she chose broadband. I bought her a Roku unit and she loves it.
With Roku for Netflix and Amazon access and her laptop plugged into her TV for Hulu access she doesn't really miss cable - but she'd really like to have a single set-top unit that provides both Netflix and Hulu.
I've been looking at the Myka ION as a possible Roku replacement/upgrade for her but it seems more capable than necessary and at least $100 over-priced. When something appears that provides Roku capability plus Hulu for around $200, I'll buy one for her. If it also provides access to the websites of CNN and broadcast networks, I'll pay $250 for it.
Note that if it also provided optional access to BBC America, Discovery, TLC, History, and NatGeo, I'd be willing to pay a reasonable subscription fee to each of those companies, buy a unit for myself, and drop my own cable TV serice in a heartbeat.
Now that I think about it, if TV broadcasters were streaming their own content to such a device, I'd also be willing to pay each of them a monthly subscription fee. How much? I don't know. But the fact that Fox was asking Time Warner $1 per month per subscriber tells me what a subscription should cost. $1 each month to each of the probably ten content providers I care about would be perfect - and save me over $60 per month compared to my current cable bill. Buying a new STB for $250 with a 4-month ROI looks like a good deal to me.
To have a link here for the petition to Netflix requesting Linux support: http://www.petitiononline.com/Linflix/petition.html [petitiononline.com]
That's unlikely to sway them, but there is hope. Netflix can walk away from the Linux desktop/netbook market right now without any concern. They are very concerned, however, about the iPhone market. Since the iPhone is unlikely to support Silverlight or Flash anytime soon, that means Netflix is really interested in finding an alternative. The real stumbling block is their content providers are demanding DRM. So possible winning solutions for Linux include:
The reason, that gets glossed over so often here, that netflix uses DRM on it's streaming is that the content owners are quite reasonably concerned about people saving it to their hard disk
No, they're quite unreasonably concerned about people saving it to their disk. Why unreasonable? Because this is a side business for Netflix currently and their main business is renting DVDs. I can copy rented DVDs to my hard disk and recompress them at leisure. Somehow, the fact that I can do this hasn't killed the rental market.
Now, possibly, I could rent every film I will ever want to watch, rip them all, and then cancel my subscription, but that isn't likely as long as more new films keep being made.
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your TV, computer, xbox, playstation, toaster, wireless router, microwave oven, water heater, fry daddy, and your wife's sybian...
I'm running the latest firmware on my A-110 and it runs like a dream. Sorry to hear about your C200 issues, but my unit is not buggy in my experience, and I highly recommend it.
yes indeed. I can play vob just fine, but it defaults to some (seemingly) random choice of the audio tracks and (for some files) can wind up being the wrong language leaving me unable to change the track.
I've got the latest firmware on both units but am still unable to play iso files or VIDEO_TS folders. The video is garbled and the audio stutters on *all* files that I try.
To me, this just goes to show that these units are not ready for production since I'm definitely not the only one out there that has described these issues. I wish they worked as advertised, but they don't.
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
I do NOT want a sea of divided little set top boxes that are merely adequate.
It pisses me off that Netflix HD streaming isn't available on the PC, but it is on dinky little boxes.
I was watching shit via Netflix's streaming service on my PC (connected to my TV) and when the PS3 finally got the Netflix service (you have to use a disc to run the Netflix software, though that should change soon) I noticed that shit was in HD.
Box A supports Hulu and Netflix but not Amazon.
Box B supports Netflix and Amazon and promises future support for other things (will never happen).
Box C lets you stream crap in crappy quality when you're away from home.
I'm amazed that a dumb box for dumb people has done so well. The concept of another box and another remote usually strike fear into the hearts of the plebes. Maybe it was the shitty name "Roku" that got people to love it.
Many TVs and Blu-Ray players already support some sort of streaming service or media channel, but it's never the one you want. This is precisely the kind of crap that SHOULD be standardized (though there's no technical reason to - it's brain-dead simple to stream video to a host on the internet) in order to help the consumer.
The popbox supports UPnP & DLNA (as a client).
The crazy thing her is that, as far as I know, Roku runs Linux, PopBox runs Linux, Tivo runs Linux. All of these appliances running Linux have Netflix streaming support. Yet we keep hearing the same line about regular old desktop Linux users not being supported because of Silverlight. These embedded Linuxes can all do it seemingly without the need for Silverlight. In the initial buzz here on Slashdot when Roku hit the scene and was revealed to run Linux, many hackers investigated the box for the same purpose you speak of. Turns out, that the part that does the Netflix magic is a binary blob. Maybe Microsoft secretely ported Silverlight (with the necessary DRM) to Linux and won't tell anyone. Maybe Netflix simply created a whole new application. My bet is on the whole new application. Other things I hear out there are that if you stream Netflix to one of the applicances (including PS3 and Xbox360) you get to stream in HD, where on the computer, you are stuck with the lesser quality. It seems like Netflix's real goal hear is service licensing revenue. I am sure Tivo, PopBox and Roku all pay for the priveledge to stream Netflix right to your TV, which is handed to the consumer, who then in turn pays even more money for monthly subscription. Sounds like Netflix has positioned themselves quite well, but is it good for the consumer?
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Which is irrelevant to my point. They are making the majority of their money by lending people films in a form that is trivial to copy. OS X even comes with a utility for doing it! Just click on the Make Image button in Disk Utility and it will copy the disk. Double click on the image and DVD Player will play it.
There's no reason to think that copying would kill their service if they suddenly switched from lending movies in one easily copiable form to lending movies in another easily copiable format, just because the second one involves the Internet. It would make it more useful though; you could download a TV show or a film and copy it to a mobile device to watch on a trip if they didn't have the DRM.
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