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]
After being available for quite some time, the OrbLive iPhone app is suddenly missing from the App Store. Orb confirmed that the app was in fact removed by Apple, but otherwise they’re just as surprised about this as we are. More »
If you haven’t upgraded to wireless-N yet, now is a great time. The spec is finally ratified and Netgear is celebrating by dropping the WNR3500L with USB networking and pre-loaded Linux for open source tinkerers. More »
LaCie has updated their LaCinema HD media streamer lineup with the new Play and Record models. As the names imply, the former can playback media while the latter can also function as an HD DVR.
The folks behind XBMC, the cross-platform media streaming solution, have announced that the first beta version (dubbed “Atlantis) of their media centre has gone live on all platforms: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and Xbox. The first things users will notice is the new skin “PM3.HD”—a high-definition tribute to Project Mayhem III. The announcement also includes “XBMC Live,” a bootable CD which gives users the opportunity to try XBMC without installing it on their hard drive (can also be booted from flash drives). Finally, XBMC for Mac now has initial support for integrating iTunes and iPhoto media. The final release of Atlantis is slated for October.
We first saw it back at CES branded as the Samsung Home Digital Media Adapter. Now it’s been rebranded as MediaLive. Essentially a media streamer, the Samsung MediaLive connects to televisions via HDMI and can stream A/V from Windows systems including AC3, H.264, JPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMA, and WMV over LAN or Wi-Fi (up to the fast “n” standard). It also offers a direct internet connection to various services like MovieLink, XM Radio, and FOX Sports. Look for it this August for US$200.
We alerted you to NEC’s fancy media-streaming home server last year: it’s an “on demand” system that’ll send your media content to Lui devices around your home and beyond. NEC has just stumped up the release schedule and pricing in Japan, and “Life with Ubiquitous Integrated solutions” systems isn’t cheap. The pocket sized player and laptop-like device are around US$495 and US$890, while the desktop PC will be US$2,100. Topping it all off, the main home server costs a whopping US$3,700. If you’re in Japan and like the idea of accessing your audio and video remotely using dedicated devices, it’s available from April 24th. We don’t have timings on a US release. [AV Watch]
NMT’s Popcorn Hour network streamer looks great on paper (YouTube/Google Streaming, DVD Image playback, XviD, MPEG4, and even BitTorrent client support), but how does it actually perform? Quite well, says Networking Audio Video dot com, but with a few very annoying bugs.
