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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.
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."
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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