The Best Streaming Media Player

DeviceGuru writes "It's looking like 2012 will be a watershed year for cord-cutters wanting to replace expensive cable TV services with low-cost gadgets that stream movies and TV shows from the Internet via free, subscription, and pay-per-view services. Accordingly, this DeviceGuru smackdown pits five popular streaming media player devices against each other. The smackdown compares Roku, Google TV, Apple TV, the Boxee Box, and Netgear's NeoTV, tabulating their key features, functions, specs, supported multimedia formats, and other characteristics, and listing the main advantages and disadvantages of each device. Then, it provides a summary chart that attempts to quantify the whole thing, so you (theoretically) can pick the best one based on what characteristics are most important to you. Of course, the market's evolving so quickly that the entire process will need to be redone in 6 months, but what else is new."

Comments

What about openness?

[sethstorm]

All fine and well if you don't want updates that the manufacturer won't give you. There's a lot of cases where this comparison review lists software deficiencies, but firmware lockdowns make things worse.

Never mind the content issues that come along with these devices.

Bittorrent client?

[jaymzter]

They seemed to have missed a bittorrent client in the list of features. How about letting me load up what *I* want to watch from the device, instead of what *you* want me to watch. Plus, if they can't mount shares, how can you connect the one upstairs with the one downstairs? These things can't stream to each other?

On another note, it seems odd my old PCH A110 can still "out feature" some of these newer players on the market. It plays from samba, nfs, or upnp shares, includes a bittorrent client, and of course handles almost any format you can throw at it. Of course, it's also very long in the tooth by now.