Review D-Link Boxee Box

A gateway to an Internet connected multimedia television
D-Link’s Boxee Box is a nice looking, compact box which can be classified as a multimedia gateway in the same way as Apple TV, Google TV and Storex’s MyTV Box. This black cube is ideally connected to your television or video projector, allowing you to view a large number of video formats in 1080p High Definition with 5.1 surround sound, picture slideshows, listen to your favourite audio playlists and view online content (social networks, video hosting sites, photos sharing sites, news sites, TV replay sites, etc.) via the Ethernet or wireless network connections (802.11n). The Boxee Box is aimed at users who want to benefit fully from their television by playing HDTV multimedia content while having the possibility of accessing social networks (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web, Pandora, MySpace…).

Playing local content, a Flash compatible web browser and full network client!
This box is capable of playing content from a locally connected peripheral device like an external hard drive, USB memory stick or memory card, while streaming media is possible via a DNLA and UPnP broadcast provided by a NAS file server, for example. In addition to this, thanks to the integrated Flash compatible web browser and the "QWERTY" remote control, you can surf most Internet sites through the television! The box also supports numerous protocols (IPV4, ARP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, DHCP Client, DNS Client, DDNS Client, HTTP Server, Samba Client, RTP/RTMP, VPN, DLNA 1.5) allowing you to connect the box to a Windows, Linux or Mac computer, or any other communicating peripheral device.

The Boxee Box is powered by an Intel Atom CE4100 (Sodaville) processor allowing for the decoding of 1080p video streams...
At the heart of the DSM-380, alias the Boxee Box, we find a 1.2 GHz Intel Atom CE4100 processor (1 core, 64 KB L1, 512 KB L2, TDP 7 Watts). This is the first Intel SoC architecture chip developed for the general public (EGP) burned at 45 nm. This "mono-core" belongs to the multimedia processor family and has been specially designed for the reception of content from Internet services on digital televisions, DVD players and other decoders. The viewing of MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV9/VC-1, 30 ips H.264 1080p or 60 ips H.264 1080i all worked perfectly well. The Intel Atom CE4100 is capable of decoding two 1080p video streams thanks to its GMA 500 (200 MHz) graphics processor and its support of HDMI 1.3a.