Bummer: Boxee Box Delayed Until November, Flash the Culprit?

This is going to sting a little bit. The Boxee Box, the device many have hailed as one of the coolest gadgets of the year--including us--will miss its promised ship date of the first half of 2010. That's a shame, because we love pretty much everything about this futuristic set-top box, which is designed to deliver free TV shows and movies from the Web right to your big screen. It's interface is killer; you can share what you're viewing via Facebook and Twitter; and the remote has a keyboard on the back for quick searches.

So what's the holdup?

It sounds like Boxee and D-Link are working to fully integrate the just-released Flash 10.1  so this slick box can handle 1080p content. Here's a quote from Boxee's blog post:

Our vision is to make the Boxee experience on a set top box as good as (and where we can, better than) the one you already know on a PC. The goal is to play HD videos from the web or a local network in 1080p and use hardware acceleration whenever possible. And to provide a TV browser experience that can handle almost everything you throw at it, including Flash 10.1.

One thing's for sure. With Logitech's Google TV box on the way, the competition to kick your cable box to the curb will be fierce this holiday season. Who knows, maybe between now and November Boxee can make nice with Hulu (especially since its subscription service is apparently imminent).

Mark Spoonauer
Editor-in-Chief
Responsible for the editorial vision for Laptopmag.com, Mark Spoonauer has been Editor in Chief of LAPTOP since 2003 and has covered technology for nearly 15 years. Mark speaks at key tech industry events and makes regular media appearances on CNBC, Fox and CNN. Mark was previously reviews editor at Mobile Computing, and his work has appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Inc.