As we’ve recounted in earlier instalments, XBMC took a long time to hit its full open source, multi-platform glory. But by 2008, not only had it successfully spread across multiple operating systems, it had also inspired a growing clan of daughter projects which took its code and swizzled it for extra effect.
If you’ve read the site at all over the past week, you’ll know that the Boxee Box is coming. But judging from some of the comments, there are still plenty of questions about the media box. Well, here’s your chance to ask anything you like about funky little media streaming device.
The arrival of XBMC on the Xbox was a significant moment in the evolution of home media centres. But the really big shift came when XBMC moved from being a console-only offering to a program that would run on multiple platforms.
Come November, you’ll be able to pick up a dedicated Boxee Box for all your streaming media needs for a pleasantly reasonable $299. To celebrate its impending launch, over the next week, we’re going to retrace the origins of Boxee, how it ended up on the Boxee Box and look at what the future might hold for media centres generally. But we have to start at the beginning, and in the beginning was some open source code and a somewhat different kind of box.
If the Boxee Box’s $349 RRP was putting you off, D-Link Australia has just confirmed that they’ve managed to come to an agreement with retailers to cut the RRP to $299 when it launches mid-November. Awesome. [Boxee]
Uh oh. Looks like it’ll be a while before you can get your hands on a D-Link Boxee Box. Apparently the device’s availability date has been changed to November:
If you’ve been hoping to get your hands on a Boxee Box here in Australia, turns out D-Link is working hard to not only bring the hardware here to Australia, but also integrate local content partnerships.
D-Link’s giving your popularity the benefit of the doubt by offering eight Ethernet ports on their new DIR-632 802.11n router. If you’re worried about all those open ports bumming you out, D-Link has three other new devices to check out.
