As we draw near the November release of Boxee Box by D-Link, Boxee has announced that Amazon.com is now exclusively taking pre-orders ($199) for the Boxee Box. If you haven’t heard of the Boxee Box, I’ll give you a moment to crawl from under the rock you’ve been living under for the past year. The Boxee Box is a media player made by D-Link and Boxee which brings all the Internet TV and social networking goodness that Boxee provides straight to your TV in a simple, easy fashion.

Good news for folks around the world as well! Along with the US launch, D-Link has decided to launch the Boxee Box internationally to the following countries (for now): US, Canada, Australia and in Europe – Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

I’m definitely ordering one right now for my bedroom. If you also want 1080p playback, 5.1 surround sound, HDMI, 802.11n WiFi and a stupidly sweet two-sided remote with QWERTY keyboard, go on and pre-order your Boxee Box for $199 now!

On par with it’s TV Show Library which was introduced in the Boxee Beta back in January, Boxee has added a Movie Library giving you access to thousands of online films. To begin with, Boxee has partnered with EZTakes, Indie Movies Online, MUBI and Openfilm to provide (mostly) free, ad-supported movies. You can also movies available from Hulu and YouTube. Boxee will be adding more movies from additional sources and even directly from studios, so look at this as an early stage with slightly rough edges. Check out a video demo after the break which shows the TV Show Library and Movie Library.

To start enjoying the Movie Library (and many bug fixes), download the latest version of Boxee. The AppleTV version will be updated next week.

The reviewer was very pleased with the box as you can read in their summary:

I came to the Boxee offices expecting to see an early beta product – i.e., partial support for video formats, definitely not expecting such a pretty unit to be able to go and surpass the well established hoards of the media streaming world. I also didn´t expect to see a full Flash implementation, HD video hardware decoding et al. I really fell in love with this cute little box – it is not just pretty, but it definitely does the job without breaking sweat.

Head to hometheater.co.il to read the full review.

The first Boxee Box by D-Link has been received by the Boxee team straight off the assembly line. Zach Klein, Boxee’s chief product officer, shows the media player in a brief video preview (see below). This is more of a look at the hardware than anything. No real details are provided other than a glimpse of the box, Boxee Box remote, splash screen and fingerprint resistant finish.

We can expect the Boxee Box some time in November per NewTeeVee. NOTE: Wheat Thins are not included!

Read more about the Boxee Box at http://boxee.tv/box.

From Boxee’s announcement on their blog:

This alliance with Sonic will enable us to partner with some of the best known content providers and deliver more premium content on Boxee over the coming months.  As users, we’re huge believers in the power of choice – we want you to be able to use any web service you’d like on Boxee to view content and this partnership opens a big door to making that possible.  RoxioNow serves a broad range of premium content to a growing ecosystem of home and mobile devices including PCs, connected TVs, set-top DVRs, Blu-ray Disc players, smartphones, and mobile devices.

This is great news for Boxee and its users indeed. Let’s be honest.. aside from the Netflix app and content provider web sites, Boxee doesn’t have much in terms of premium, quality content. It’s about damn time Boxee gets something besides another viral video, web series or podcast app addition.

Source: Boxee

There is a lot of buzz around the web regarding Google TV. So far, it has been called everything from a set-top box killer to “just another Boxee” to an epic fail. Rather than prematurely making judgement I thought I’d let the dust settle for a few days, collect my thoughts, then touch on the subject of how Google TV impacts us, the HTPC community.

So what does Google TV mean for the HTPC community? Immediately, probably not much. However, in the future it’ll impact us–greatly in some ways. Google TV will present us HTPC enthusiasts with great opportunities.

Little to No Immediate Impact

The HTPC and media center market is a very niche market. We like to be in complete control of our media and take pride in our configurations. We typically don’t like canned solutions that don’t allow us to dirty our hands a little bit. This probably won’t change for the most part. And chances are our viewing preferences today will be the same months from now. Likewise, we’ll continue to upgrade and build our HTPC’s for years to come.

The Google TV platform won’t satisfy the typical HTPC enthusiast’s viewing needs for a while. When it does perhaps some people will convert from HTPCs to set-top boxes. Until then, business is usual for manufacturers and media center developers.

A New Software Media Center

What some people fail to understand is that Google TV is a platform–not the TVs or set-top boxes it runs on. Fortunately for us this platform is open source and developers will have their hands on the SDK early next year. I wouldn’t expect it to be long before several Google TV media center projects begin to sprout up. The same HTPC hardware you have right now might be able to run Google TV. We as enthusiasts may have a chance to have a true all-in-one media center solution.

Media Centers Might Use New IP Control Protocol

A new IP control protocol is used by Google TV to control cable and satellite set-top boxes. This sounds similar to XBMC’s event server API. Imagine if, over time, manufacturers implement this feature as a standard practice in hopes of being more appealing to Google TV users. This means that our media centers will also be able to implement this protocol to control our set-top boxes.

Google TV Brings Competition

Boxee founder Avner Ronen commented about Google TV after the demo:

watched the Google TV demo. more complementary than competitive. we should start working on Boxee Android App for TV… :)

This competition and Google TV is good for everyone in the long run. Developers and manufacturers reap the profits and fan base as a result of their efforts. Users reap the benefit of great features bred from attempts to improve.

Google TV is coming and will change a lot of things regardless of our individual opinions. Prepare for it and reap the reward, or ignore it and get left behind.

Editor’s Note: What Google TV means to the DVR/PVR might be a less fluffy. More information coming soon.

Boxee users can now share recommendations with Google Buzz. It was only natural considering Buzz’ steadily growing success and appeal and the fact that Google introduced its new Google Buzz API today. Now Google Buzz joins Boxee’s already decent list of supported networks: Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Tumblr, Flickr and Digg.

If you prefer Google Buzz over Twitter or you’re like me and like having a presence across multiple networks, just link your Google Buzz account from Boxee’s services page. Be sure to import your Google Buzz feed into Boxee if you want to watch video recommendations from friends on Buzz.

Source: Boxee

Ed Helms and Rob Corddry in New Line Cinema's Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

Gizmodo posted an interesting interview with Rob Corddry, one of the stars from Hot Tub Time Machine. I’m surprised at how much of a technophile this guy is. I’m even more surprised at his somewhat shared thoughts on internet TV.

Gizmodo: Do all web shows secretly aspire to be real TV shows? Or is there a place for internet content that’s happy to be internet content.

Rob Corddry: I really don’t know. I definitely think it pretty much remains a separate entity. What happens in the future, I think, depends largely on the technology. We haven’t really got it right yet. Apple TV is just a novelty—I have it, I never use it. Boxee I really don’t get, it’s kinda hard to hook my computer and everything up to my television, and even then, I’m not sure that’s the most efficient way to watch my media. The only thing I can think of, gadget wise, that I really enjoy and use is Netflix streaming, whether it be on my Roku or my PS3. That’s the best I’ve seen. But there’s been no real marriage of television and the internet, truly.

There you have it.. Rob thinks Apple TV is dumb, Boxee is confusing and Netflix + Roku or PS3 is his best friend. Well, not really but you get the point: We’re not there yet.

And what will this real marriage of television and internet look like? I’m not 100% certain but here is a wishlist of things I hope the pioneers think of:

• We don’t need channels. We are users and no longer a “viewing audience.” We browse the internet and likewise want to browse our shows. We don’t need information sequentially pushed to us.
• That being said, we definitely don’t need to be charged per channel. We care about shows not channels or networks.
• We don’t need to be charged per episode (hint: Apple, Amazon, etc).
• We don’t want to wait days for new episodes like we do for Hulu or even hours like we do on network sites.
• We need more openness (not what we see now with Hulu blocking different “platforms”).
• We need more Clicker and less Hulu. We need more aggregators and less streamers.

We’re getting there. Clicker as a website is doing interesting things. From a software standpoint Boxee isn’t quite there yet mostly due to the (understandable) current lack of openness of content providers. They’re more on the right track than any other media center. Hopefully more media centers take note.

Devices, software and content providers altogether have a bit of distance to travel. Internet TV is coming slowly but surely. It’s going to continue to be interesting observing this journey.

What are your thoughts on internet TV?

While not nearly as crotch-hardening as this afternoon’s official launch of the Nexus One phone by Google, I’m pleased at what the Boxee team has just given a tease on: The Boxee Box Remote.

Unfortunately, no details have been shared about the device. All they’ve revealed is that it has a QWERTY keyboard on its underbelly, wireless of some sort, and sleek as hell.

If I were a gambling man, I’d bet the Boxee Box Remote will only be shipped in box with the Boxee Box (hence the name). I hope not, but we’ll see.

UPDATE: It looks like Engadget has gotten hands-on with the Boxee Box at CES.

Oh… did I mention the Boxee Box powered by D-Link? Hmmm.. Looks like Boxee has done a lot with the $6M catalyst they spoke of back in August.

via The Boxee Beta