Thursday 11 April 2013

Boxee TV could be worth it to those fed up with cable

By Cornelius Nunev


Cable, in a ton of ways, is a royal pain in a specific part of the body. Hence the rise of streaming boxes, which allow individuals to stream programming via Wi-Fi. One such forthcoming product is Boxee TV, a streaming set-top container that also does DVR services and can pick up basic channels via an HD antenna.

Boxee Television follows format of Roku, SimpleTV

There are many boxes available to hook up to your Television. Then, it will record shows if you need it to with a DVR function, and it can access Netflix, Hulu and more through the internet.

There's a new one coming out called Boxee TV, according to Time magazine, which takes a slightly different approach. Boxee Television has existed before. The business launched a streaming TV box a couple years ago that failed miserably. However, the new one works a bit different, in that it utilizes cloud storage for DVR recordings.

The new Boxee Television also isn't really terribly costly, beginning at $99 for the box. Adding DVR services is $14.99 per month, which is more than some competing models but much less than it would cost with satellite or cable.

Already getting an antenna

Customers can use the Boxee Television as a DVR box since it has a cable port. It can also be used to get NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS, CBS and other publicly broadcast stations because it has an antenna. It has apps on it for YouTube, Pandora, VUDU, Netflix, Vimeo and more.

The way it differs from comparable boxes such as Roku or Netgear, which are less expensive by half, is that Boxee Television doesn't have any on-board memory, nor does it require an external hard drive for storage, such as the recently-released Simple.TV, according to CNET. Storage is done via uploading content to a cloud "locker," which customers can access at any time. It is a dual-code DVR recorder and can record two programs simultaneously. Customers cannot stop live programs, like on TiVo, however.

That said, unlike DVR systems that are affected by the memory, cloud storage is unlimited. However, getting the DVR service does cost the $14.99 monthly fee, though that's hardly enough to send a person out for short term loans to cover.

Not everyone has access

The Boxee TV comes with DVR, but that is only accessible in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., New York, Los Angles, Chicago, Dallas and Houston right now. The company promises to expand that in the next year, but not every person has access to the DVR services.

Everyone else can only use it as a streaming device, until DVR services are available everywhere. At that it fails, since other set-top boxes for those who want to cut the cord are much cheaper and have more or the same streaming native apps.




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