CES 2010 - USB 3, ITV/Media Streamers and Lots of eReaders
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 6, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Getting Legal and Illegal Content onto your TV
While I'd expect to see a lot of USB 3.0 stuff at CES, expect to see a number of set-top boxes designed to stream content to your TVs.
Seagate had its FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player on display. Either slide in a Seagate external 2.5" USB HDD or connect any other NTFS or HFS+ formatted USB storage device and the media player will allow you to play any contents on your TV.
There's also ethernet support for wired networks and an optional wireless dongle. The set-top box will scour your network for movies in virtually any container format and let you play them on your TV. This generation of media players has no problems playing H.264 encoded content even in .mkv containers.
Enthusiast favorite Syabas Technology, makers of the Popcorn Hour, had their own set-top media player on display as well. It's a more content provider friendly device compared to the Popcorn Hour as it has no internal hard drive. It's called the Popbox and features much of the same hardware as the Popcorn Hour devices. It too can play virtually any video in nearly any container format. The Popbox lacks things like an integrated BitTorrent client to make it a bit more content-provider friendly (e.g. make it seem like not so much of a piratebox).
In a different approach we also have things like the Boxee Box by D-Link. Boxee is free software for your Mac, Apple TV, Windows or Linux PC that acts as an aggregator of online TV content. Nearly all TV networks allow you to access content online (with limitations), Boxee simply unifies access to all of that. Instead of going to five different websites to catch up on your shows, Boxee attempts to give you all of the TV content you want in a single 10-foot UI.
The Boxee Box by D-Link is a standalone set-top box that, when hooked up to the internet, gives you the same Boxee experience without a PC. This is yet another example of Moore's Law paving the way for low cost devices to do things that weren't possible just a few years ago.
The Boxee software will continue to be available free on the web. The Boxee Box is simply for those users who want a simpler solution. Even Hulu support is technically there as Boxee uses a Mozilla browser to go out and grab the content before playing it full screen.
The Boxee Box doesn't only play internet TV content, it can also play any non-DRM content you might have access to.
It's a neat interface and the box will sell for under $200, like most others in this category. Boxee plans on announcing additional hardware details later this week.
The Boxee remote is ridiculously cool. On one side you get an Apple-inspired simple pointer remote, and on the other side you get a full QWERTY keyboard for typing in search strings to find TV shows to watch:
Playing H.264 content on your TV is no longer an issue. I'd say that by 2011 we can expect to see commoditization of H.264 media streaming boxes, and it won't be much longer before we can see this functionality integrated into all TVs. The question is whether or not the TV folks will get the UI down right.
Until then, it looks like you'll have a number of options for getting your content around the house and streaming internet TV content to existing TVs. Prices are looking to be in the $100 - $200 range for this sort of functionality based on what we've seen thus far.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
14 Comments
View All Comments
jmurbank - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
What I did not expect to read from your article was the introduction of Netbook or you called it a Smartbook that is very, very thin. Even that thin of a device, Intel Atom processors can not fit with out over heating. It is a sure thing that it uses an ARM processor and Marvell is showing their ARM Cortex processor that they introduced a few months ago.I expected a USB 3 device to be explained. USB is a pathetic connection compared to IEEE-1394 if you want high bandwidth and almost instant access. Also USB is even more pathetic against SATA or eSATA. USB to this day requires a black art in programming to make it work well in latency and bandwidth benchmarks. USB 3 will not fix any problems that anybody is hoping. It causes more problems such as people coming into Linux forums and whining about their USB can not provide a high bandwidth that they usually get in another operating system.
sprockkets - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
There are so many of these new set top boxes on the market, most even claim full compatibility with mkv and vorbis and h264 at the highest levels.You should get a few of them and make a review.
jdietz - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
The FreeAgent Theater+ HD does not impress me. The only research I did was check Seagate's website for the specs. I watch mostly subtitled Japanese anime (sorry) so I need a box that supports a large variety of subtitles. The Seagate unit doesn't support ASS (sorry guys) which is a very common subtitle format. WD TV HD is a product line from Western Digital which does include this support. The docking station is nice and all, but doesn't really interest me as a feature. All products in this category will play nice with an FAT or NTFS formatted USB drive.jdietz - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
What makes it a gaming case? Micro-ATX cases have been available for awhile. It's no problem to put high end components in there and call it a gaming box. I used the now pretty old Antec NSK2400 case for mine.What's really impossible is a mini-ITX gaming case. Now that I'd like to see. I think a different recent article was talking about a mini-ITX motherboard and how there are no chassis for it.
Boxee Box is a strange name for a product. It seems...redundant.
HotFoot - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
It's a gaming case because it's designed to fit the video card, really. Actually, this is pretty much exactly the layout I'd be wanting to replace my hefty P182 when the time finally comes to upgrade. My remaining question would be how much room is there for a proper tower cooler like the TRUE120.Taft12 - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
If the case is wide enough for an ultra high-end video card, it should be wide enough for a tower cooler. I also think this looks like a terrific product and am happy to see more migration to micro-ATX and ITX.fyres - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
can view non-DRM content, that is nice!like the overall design.
btw, there are live discussions at 7pm PST at www.livefyre.com throughout CES, join share your opinions on CES news.
blyndy - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
The second usb cable plugin into the card for power might have been the only way to make it work but it's cluttery and tangly. I would wait for native usb3, I don't like dealing with lots of cables and expresscards waiting to be snapped off.I'm waiting for SSDs powered only by the usb3 cable, like the OCZ one.
blyndy - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
I definitely like the increased support for micro-ATX. When I put my ATX mid-tower next to my mATX tower it's like looking at an old 486 motherboard next to a modern motherboard.I would like to see a few more windows in mATX cases though, there don't seem to be many (good ones). I think the inwin case layout would be especially good for a case window.
semo - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
I think USB 3 should be the big news at CES.I like the seagate kit but why only 500GB limit? for such high price i'd expect more