Every day, 3.2 gajigabytes of streaming video are delivered straight to the screens of slackers like you and me, sitting at our desks at work and gawping at classic outtakes from The Muppet Show in 1979, re-creations of news events by creative Taiwanese animators, and adorably cute animal babies.
Why don't we just take all that entertainment home and splash it up on our HDTV screens?
That's the idea behind Boxee, which organizes web video for you, makes it easier to share with other people, and simplifies the browsing interface, so it's better suited for when you're sitting on the couch.
Boxee has existed as software for over a year now, and now it's available as a $200 gadget, the Boxee Box.
The hardware, which is made by home-networking giant D-Link, is unusual-looking but cool, shaped as if it were a cube of plastic sinking into the table. Because of its height, it won't fit on a narrow entertainment center shelf, and it doesn't go nicely in front of the TV, either. You need to find a tall shelf somewhere.
On the back is an ethernet cable for internet connectivity (or you can use Wi-Fi), an HDMI port for connecting to your TV (it supports 1080p video output), and two USB ports for connecting external hard drives. There's also an SD card slot on the front for viewing photos and videos from memory cards.
The dual-sided remote is clever: You can navigate most of Boxee's onscreen menus with the simpler side: It's got a play/pause button, a D-pad, and a menu button. Any time you need to enter some text, you just flip the remote over, turn it sideways, and start thumb-typing on the tiny but usable QWERTY.
The remote sometimes gets confused if you press buttons on both sides at once, which is easy to do unless you hold it carefully. Also, entering passwords using the QWERTY (as you have to do for secured Wi-Fi networks and to access your Boxee account) is extremely frustrating, especially if your passwords have a mix of upper and lower case, because you can't see what you're typing on the screen.
