Smart Home Blog

When Boxee announced its own box designed by D-Link I suspected that it should be based on nVidia Ion as a compact and the most reliable to Linux platform. I was wrong but just a little bit. The Boxee Box will use mobile nVidia platform Tegra 2. Together with a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU it should bring 1080p video to your HDTV. Except that Boxee Box will be able playback of flash HD content.

Other hardware components are RF chip by Nordic for remote control and 802.11N wireless chip by Broadcom. The box won’t have internal HDD to decrease its cost, keep it compact and chill. Many people already have USB HDDs or NASes. So, internal hard drive inside the media player is no needed. The boxee box will lack IR receiver. Sure universal remote control is good. But remote with a full QWERTY keyboard is better. In any case, Boxee team promise to add support of IR dongles in the future.

And the finally about the price and availability. Boxee Box from D-Link will be available this March at $200.

A few days ago a SDK for Roku was openned for all developers. It’s available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux to allow programmers use their preferable OS. Using SDK developers can produce their own channels for Roku which will be published in the Channel Store after review and testing.

Roku is cool network player with very reasonable price – $79.99 for SD version, $99.99 for HD and $129.99 for HD + WiFi. But it’s designed to playback online content. As I know currently there is no way to watch stream from local network or from USB mass storage. And this is a big disadvantage for non-US folks. However, I hope those limitations will be fixed with 3rd part extensions developed with Roku SDK. Moreover, maybe it’d be possible use Roku as a client for MythTV or VDR. Will see that.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

A.C. Ryan published photos of its new network player Playon!HD Mini. Actually it’s smaller version of Playon!HD. But mini version still keeps all functionality of its big brother – supports 1080p resolution over HDMI or component and playbacks all knows A/V formats and containers from USB mass storage or network shares. It just leaks internal HDD and NAS functionality. But the price in €99 can be good compensation for this.

[via Engadget]

Today is benefit performance of Boxee. Together with new Beta, announced in Brooklyn last night, the information about official Boxee Box was published on the Boxee website. It’ll be Dlink DSM-380! The small device (just 120mm x 120mm x 120mm) with strange design should occupy the place near your TV. There is no hardware spec yet. But I suppose that it’ll use nVidia Ion platform (maybe second generation). There are not do many port and interfaces. Just HDMI, optical S/PDIF and Composite audio, Ethernet, 2 USB ports and SD card reader. Additionally the DSM-380 is equiped with WiFi adapter and RF remote control which looks like Apple remote.

The DSM-380 should be available in the second quarter of 2010 for about $200. If so, it might be good opportunity to get advanced media player. Because the price of its nearest competitor Myka starts from $379 but it includes optical drive.

Regarding the design of DSM-380. Sure the Boxee and DLink know better how their device should look like. But personally I prefer something more practical like AppleTV or ASUS EEE Desktop, which can fit any A/V stand or be mounted behind TV.

I already wrote about Seagate’s FreeAgent Theater – media player with dock for FreeAgent Go portable HDD. It looked very attractive. Especially for non-geek people who don’t want to spend their time to setup Popcorn Hour or HTPC. But it had one big disadvantage – missed HDMI output.

It took 9 monthes to produce improved version of FreeAgent Theater. FreeAgent Theater+ has not only HDMI output but Ethernet port and ability to wireless connection to the LAN using USB WiFi adapter. Sure it supports all known media formats and containers as many networked media players as well as 1080p HD video, DTS 2.0 + Digital Out or Dolby Digital technology. The player for consumers offers a simple and intuitive user interface.

The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ is already available at $149.99. The bundle player plus 500Gb FreeAgent Go costs $289.99. The FreeAgent Theater+ Wireless Adapter is expected to be available in October as a separate accessory through Seagate.com for $69.99.

Taking into account the price, offered functionality and the original idea for storage FreeAgent Theater+ can be success competitor for networked media players on the market.

Another new product from Seagate is FreeAgent DockStar. It’s a dock-station for FreeAgent Go portable HDD with Pogoplug NAS capabilities. For the $99 you can get FreeAgent DockStar plus one year of Pogoplug remote access and sharing service ($29). Sure you may use original Pogoplug device to share HDD content in the local network. But FreeAgent DockStar is more suitable for FreeAgent Go owners. And it has two USB ports more.

[via eHomeUpgrade/eHomeUpgrade]