PopBox STB To Ship Soon But Without Netflix, Pandora

DeviceGuru writes "Syabas says it is nearly ready to ship the PopBox, which it announced in January (though they said at the time it would ship in March). The $129 Internet-based A/V streaming set-top box will offer a variety of user-selectable media-streaming apps, but is unlikely at launch to include Netflix instant downloads (promised at announcement), Pandora music, or Amazon pay-per-view video support. According to Syabas, the PopBox only works with HDTVs and not standard definition TVs, and has component outputs in addition to HDMI; plus, the company says the device supports RealD 3D. More details are on the PopBox website."

Doesn't require Windows "server" software?

[longbot]

This appears to be the first inexpensive STB that supports discovery and streaming of media directly from a SAMBA or other protocol server. Most of the set top boxes to date have been dependent on software running on a host OS on a computer elsewhere in your network (I have one of the Kodak ones).

Re:Doesn't require Windows "server" software?

[sortius_nod]

Not so... WDTV Live (SMB, UPNP-AV, YouTube) has been around for a while and supports custom firmware. I have one, I can even play DVDs over USB DVD drive or SMB share (providing you have some sort of DeCSS tool running on the server/machine you're streaming from). To me, it looks like a bit of a waste if you just want to stream off your network. Other applications it may work well for, but I'll stick to my WDTV Live in the bedroom and my Beyonwiz DP-P1 in the lounge.

Re:Yawn

[alen]

this is OSS Linux. instead of being entertained you can spend all night hacking it and playing with the file system

Re:Yawn

[elrous0]

Maybe it would be easier to tell us what it DOES include. No Netflix, Hulu, or Youtube, as far as I can tell. What does that even leave?

Meet the competition

[kimvette]

The $129 Internet-based A/V streaming set-top box will offer a variety of user-selectable media-streaming apps, but is unlikely at launch to include Netflix instant downloads (promised at announcement), Pandora music, or Amazon pay-per-view video support.

Oh, so in other words, it's dead on arrival.

When you figure that Blu-Ray players can be had for $12 more than this piece of crap and the Blu-Ray player can do not only Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, Youtube, and so on, it can also play Blu-Ray, DVD, and CD media.

Fail.

Re:Who is the market?

[Nukenbar]

The market is for people that download 4-8GB Bluray rips off of the PirateBay and want to play them on their big screen HDTVs. Most laptops older than 3-4 years that were not top of the line will not have the horsepower to do a 1080p mkv, let alone have an HDMI and optical audio output.

This might not do everything, but If your main goal is to play Hires movies that you already have on your network, this is not a bad option.