AfterDawn: News

New details of next year's Boxee Box announced

At a launch party in New York City last night Boxee representatives announced the beta version of their web-based media center program which runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, and AppleTV set-top boxes. The company also released additional details about the upcoming Boxee set-top box. It will be manufactured by D-Link and go on sale to the public next year.

Both the Boxee Box and the Boxee beta software will be on display at January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The software will be released to the general public at that time as well.



Before then access to the beta will be by invitation only, eventually opening to current users of the Boxee alpha version.

In addition to the new UI, the new Windows version of Boxee adds DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA), allowing you to take advantage of newer graphics cards' video decoding capabilities.

The Boxee Box will have both wireless (802.11N) and wired Ethernet to connect to your home network and the internet, as well as 2 USB ports and a SD Card slot to read files locally. Video and audio connections will include a HDMI port, S/PDIF connector, and 2 channel analog audio out.

No date was given for the Boxee Box's release. Presumably it will depend at least partly on how quickly the Boxee software is ready for a 1.0 release.

Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 8 Dec 2009 10:48

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• 4 comments

• emugamer

  The standalone boxee looks promising. Lots of video container support and a great interface. I'd look into this to replace my popcornhour and it's rudimentary gui.
  
  XBMC was my favorite and only media center for SD media. I've been waiting for an HD equivalent.

  8.12.2009 11:59 #1

• Burnasty

  I tried boxee a while ago and wen't right back xbmc. XBMC seems to work better with my setup in terms of setup and giving me my media the way I like it. I know boxee is derived from xbmc but it seems to have gone too far from the core for my likes.

  8.12.2009 15:17 #2

• emugamer

  Originally posted by Burnasty: I tried boxee a while ago and wen't right back xbmc. XBMC seems to work better with my setup in terms of setup and giving me my media the way I like it. I know boxee is derived from xbmc but it seems to have gone too far from the core for my likes.What OS do you have XBMC running in? It ran buggy for me when I had Vista Ultimate 64. Haven't tried it in 7 yet.
  
  I'm assuming that a self contained version of Boxee in a standalone unit would be stable though.

  8.12.2009 15:42 #3

• Burnasty

  I had ran it on vista business 32 bit and 7 home premium 64 bit. XBMC is the gold standard.

  9.12.2009 22:12 #4