D-LINK BOXEE BOX MEDIA PLAYER

               The Boxee Box is essentially a media player just like the WD TV Live Hub. Connectivity includes two USB 2.0 ports with NTFS support, a LAN jack, HDMI, Optical audio-out and stereo-out. Wi-Fi ‘n’ comes built-in by default. The remote has standard navigation buttons on one side and a QWERTY keypad on the other. The navigation buttons have a good response and so does the keypad. The Boxee Box is powered by an Intel Atom CE4110 SOC processor. The apps available cover popular categories such as YouTube, TuneIn Radio, Vimeo, etc. The menu is divided into TV Shows, Apps, Movies and Local, making it easy to navigate. The Boxee Box is quite speedy since the interface isn’t very graphical. Its main USP is the streaming video services from various sources around the Web. Besides streaming, you can also connect your hard drive or SD card and use it as a HD media player. It supports 1080p video in most major formats. It really shines in the software department, which is rivalled only by XBMC. But at Rs 13,999, it feels expensive. For a good experience, you’ll need a speedy Internet connection for streaming videos. A very good alternative to this would be the WD TV Live Hub, which retails for around Rs 10,000.

Verdict: Good app support, but a bit expensive for a media player.
For: Easy to use UI, compact design, 1080p decoding, good app support.
Against: Expensive, no in-built storage, many streaming services are not available in India.

SPECIFICATION

www.dlink.co.in
Dimensions (WxHxD): 4.5 x 4.5 x 4.6 in; Video formats:
Flash 10.1, H.264 (MKV, MOV), VC-1, WMV, MPEG-4,
AVI, Xvid, Divx, VOB; Audio formats: MP3, WMA, WAV,
FLAC, AAC, DTS, Dolby Digital, Ogg; Image formats:
JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG; Connectivity: HDMI, Composite,
S/PDIF, USB 2.0, eSATA, Wi-Fi n