Boxee Box: The Inside Story, Swapping Tegra 2 for Intel CE4100
by Ganesh T S & Brian Klug on September 13, 2010 10:31 AM EST- Posted in
- Media Streamer
- Home Theater
- HTPC
Media streamer companies have expertise in either hardware or software, but rarely both. Boxee realized this early on that were they to go out and try to build a box themselves, they would probably fail. By linking a strategic partnership with D-Link which has experience building hardware, and also has a great retail channel presence, they managed to make up for one of their critical shortcomings. D-Link, on the other hand, had to figure out a way to handle the shift in the entertainment ecosystem. For an optimal user experience, a full solution, right from the NAS to the home network to the actual media streamer, had to be created. We have seen attempts at this from both Netgear and D-Link earlier, but all their media streamer offerings failed in terms of the user interface and experience. By partnering with Boxee, they too have managed to overcome one of their shortcomings. How well this has worked out will soon be seen, as the Boxee Box is already up for pre-order on Amazon and should ship before the end of November. D-Link and Boxee also announced that the unit would be up for pre-order internationally (including US, Canada, Australia and the EU).
This product also gives Intel a boost in the mainstream SoC market space. Being the first unit with the CE4100 (actually, any x86 based SoC) to ship to the mainstream consumer (at a palatable $199 price point), Intel would hope that its popularity would be a sign of things to come for x86 based SoCs.
For AnandTech to recommend a media streamer, it must strive to enable the consumer to watch whatever content he wants wherever he wants. Boxee Box seems to have taken this philosophy to heart, unlike some of the other recently announced media streamers. While we hope that the unit can live up to the heightened expectations it has just created, we know that the proof is in the pudding. We will be closely following this streamer as it nears release, and in the meanwhile, if you have something particular that you want to be tested on this unit, feel free to let us know in the comments.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
51 Comments
View All Comments
ganeshts - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Thanks, fixed.evilspoons - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
People actually still care about Real Media content?? I haven't installed Realplayer in something like seven years and I've only come across a couple things I haven't been able to watch as a result.Also: I find it extremely unlikely to matter to 99.5% of consumers that this thing is missing NFS support. You're going to want to watch files shared on a Windows box or a Mac, and SMB would cover both of those- the Macs would just require you to turn on the proper sharing feature. (Isn't HFS+ a file system like NTFS?)
Wikipedia even redirects CIFS to SMB so I'm not sure what the issue is there...
As for the Linux nuts who are miffed they don't have NFS, well, just install Samba. It's not hard.
And FTP? Either you've got a local link and can use SMB or you probably don't have a fast enough streaming connection to worry about playing video from FTP anyway. I mean, for the future, sure, but it seems weird to list as a con right now.
Now: disc menus and DRM'd disc content not being available, those are real drawbacks. This thing would be absolutely killer in the market if you could plug in a USB Blu-Ray drive and watch movies the same way you do on a "regular' player.
ganeshts - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
evilspoons, CIFS is fixed now.RealMedia is very prevalent in China (and by extension, with the Chinese community in the US). Otherwise, all the media streamer chip companies wouldn't be adding support to it (Sigma Designs added support for Real Media in the new 8646 which they have been avoiding for 3 generations of chips).
NFS is important for Blu-Ray ISO streaming since SMB often has bottlenecks and lesser throughput.
evilspoons - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Huh, I had no idea about the RealMedia thing or the NFS business - I have hard-wired GigE that has never given me bandwidth troubles with SMB, but apparently it has seriously helped people with 802.11n cards and stuttering movies.Please note that I re-read my comment and it seemed a bit mean-spirited, I didn't mean anything of the sort - just giving my opinion.
I may very well buy one or two of these Boxes if they're nearly as good as we all hope.
chrnochime - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
People actually care to muck around with a media streamer that has this shortcoming or that? Huh?If I'm stuck with getting a media streamer, it would actually be VERY convenient since all those Chinese subbed J dramas are encoded to rmvb. Just because you don't care doesn't mean it's useless for others. Oh wait I thought that was obvious already LOL
deadsix - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
Why did the Boxee engineers disable GigE? While streaming movies to my PS3 with PS3 media server I've seen over 100Mbps.sprockkets - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
If that were the case your movie size would be around 50 gigabytes for a 90 minute movie. Sure about that?haze4peace - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
That simply isn't true. My roommate streams high quality movies from my computer and I watch how much bandwidth is sent to him. It rarely goes over 6 MBps on the highest of quality movies i own. Usually hovers between 2 and 3 MBps. 100Mbps can theoretically runs at 12.5MBps, which is more than enough to watch a single movie.deadsix - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
I'm basing it off what the PS3 says when you bring up the info overlay... but that might be video bitrate.... I might have been confused.mataichi - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
All the media streamers I've seen render subtitles in some generic looking way (ie same font, color, border etc). I assume Boxee will be the same? For instance, if I watch a file on my computer and the subtitle color is red and some cursive font, will it display this way on Boxee or will it convert to the generic style. I watch a lot of subtitled videos and its a big deal that the subtitles display as the subtitler intended.