Made by Syabas, a company that has been making hardware streaming devices primarily for the A/V enthusiast under the Popcorn Hour brand, the Popbox is a sleeker, more user-friendly Internet set-top box made for a more mainstream audience.
Like other Internet media centers, Popbox has a number of channel partners on board to provide content: Twitter, BlipTV, Crunchyroll, IMDB, Netflix, NextNewNetworks, Revision3 and more -- check out the full list of partners. The user interface is similar to other offerings, designed for use with the included remote control.
Popbox vs. Boxee
Popbox will be hoping to take advantage of two factors in the race to win the hearts and minds of Internet video enthusiasts: price (at $129, it will come in below the Boxee Box's expected $200 cost) and time to market (slated for a March launch, the hardware will in all likelihood be available before the Boxee Box's "sometime in Q2" release date).
Still, Boxee has built a loyal fan base for its popular software media center who will make a great existing market for its device. They are also embracing a more "platform-agnostic" approach, where Mac, Windows and Linux clients will still be in active development at the same time as the hardware solution. Popbox has a much more hardware-centric approach, and has no current plans to offer a pure software solution.
In either case, it's about to be a great time to think about how to bring Internet content to your television. Do you already watch online video on your TV? If so, what's your solution?
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