set-top box

The Boxee Box's launch finally has a date.

Those who preorder the set-top box from Amazon.com or Best Buy will be get their hands on it November 10. Those who plan to wait will find the Boxee Box on store shelves a week later.

The Boxee Box, built by D-Link, is a media player that allows 1080p HD videos to be streamed to a TV from the Web or a local network. It can also run a browser on the TV, including Flash content.

The standalone device will offer "nearly 40,000 TV episodes" and a &… Read more

Editors' note: As of July 2011, this product has been discontinued and replaced by the Roku 2 XD.

A Netgear-branded Roku XD box is making its way to several retailers.

Dubbed Netgear Roku Player NTV250, the device is the Roku XD featuring Netgear branding. It enables users to access several channels from Roku's service, including Amazon Video On Demand, Netflix, Pandora, and others. The offering also includes the ability to view Flickr photos and UFC content. Unlike the competing Apple TV, which boasts 720p video content, the Roku XD supports 1080p content.

Netgear isn't selling branded versions of … Read more

We've been quite excited about the potential of streaming-video game service OnLive, which forgoes any physical software or system/graphics needs and lets players play games on remote servers via streaming video. The effect is largely seamless, and for some games like adventures it's a fantastic cloud-based substitute for owning an expensive gaming laptop. The only drawback was price: OnLive's games not only cost money, but the OnLive service also levied a subscription fee.

That fee's now been waived: OnLive has dropped its monthly charge. That means that free demos can now be sampled without any … Read more

We made the case this week for holding off on buying the new and improved (and shrunken) Apple TV. We highlighted a few other boxes, notably those made by Roku, that might be better Internet TV choices, but also pointed out that the other devices sport features that Apple TV might eventually get.

That said, some consumers aren't going to be ditching their cable or satellite TV anytime soon, and for them the question is irrelevant.

For the others, the set-top market is going to be fractured and confusing, much like the burgeoning tablet market. And, well, that's … Read more

This post was updated with TiVo's announcement.

Potential cord cutters take note: the cheapest and arguably easiest and (for some) long-awaited way to bring Hulu to a TV is now a reality.

Roku today confirmed the murmurings of yesterday that Hulu Plus is coming to its trio of set-top boxes. Starting "later this fall," the $9.99-per-month service that brings on-demand movies and TV shows from NBC, Fox, ABC, and others will be available.

There is no extra fee beyond the standard Hulu Plus subscription.

This is, of course, not the only way to get Hulu on … Read more

Apple inked a deal with Rovi today that could potentially see the firm's TV listings guide make its way to future Apple products.

Rovi, which was formerly known as Macrovision before the company officially changed its name in 2009, provides TV guide listings to hardware vendors. The company's technology allows users to sift through programming, find shows, and record programs to a DVR.

Exact details of Rovi's deal with Apple are unknown, but analysts at Piper Jaffray believe the licensed services will be making their way to the Apple TV and eventually, an all-in-one Apple television.

According … Read more

After several months of delay, the Boxee Box set-top box is now available for preorder.

It won't ship until November, and when it does it will have new chips inside: instead of the previously announced Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset, the oddly shaped set-top will feature Intel's Atom processor instead. The switchover was responsible for the delay, according to Boxee.

The device will sell for $200 through Boxee.tv or Amazon.com. Before it was a piece of hardware, Boxee was a software download that put Internet content on a TV screen. The Boxee Box, which was built by … Read more

In an attempt to capitalize on the talk surrounding the Apple TV, Boxee revealed in a blog post earlier this week that it will start selling its anticipated Boxee Box in November for $200.

"We all watched the Apple announcement," Boxee CEO Avner Ronen wrote on his company's blog. "We walked away feeling confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms."

Ronen then said that the Boxee Box "is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, … Read more

This is an update to a post from a couple months ago. It reflects some permanent price drops on the Roku line of set-top boxes!

Looking for an easy way to watch streaming Netflix movies and TV shows? Look no further than the Roku HD, a tiny set-top box that streams from not only Netflix, but also Major League Baseball, Amazon Video on Demand, Flickr, Pandora, and dozens more content providers.

Roku just dropped the price of this model to a very tempting $69.99, and if you buy it from Amazon, you'll get a $10 Video on Demand credit. … Read more