Boxee Box squaring off next month
The long-awaited Boxee Box is coming November 10 to those who preorder the device. It will be available at retail on November 17.
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 "vast range" of movies for rent, Boxee and D-Link said today. The set-top box will also access the videos, songs, and pictures stored on a person's computer or home network. Although its MSRP is listed as $229, the device will sell for $199 at launch, Boxee said.
Originally unveiled in December and fully detailed at CES earlier this year, the device was originally scheduled to hit store shelves in the second quarter. But after changing its processor from Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip to Intel's Atom, the company was forced to delay the release.
The delay could come back to haunt Boxee. By releasing it next month, the company is arriving somewhat late to the set-top box market. Roku's set-top boxes have been available for some time. Last month, Apple released its refreshed Apple TV. Logitech's Revue, the first Google TV-based device to hit store shelves, will be available this month. And all that fails to mention the video-streaming functionality that game consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 offer.
Regardless, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen said last month that he believes the set-top box will perform well at retail.
"We all watched the Apple announcement," 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."