APPLE TV

Best Boxes for Streaming Internet Video (And More) to Your TV

by Jon Chase on December 2, 2010 at 12:00 PM

Best Boxes for Streaming Internet Video (And More) to Your TV

As a tech blogger, you know things are getting tricky when you can't even figure out what to call the devices you're writing about. Digital Media Streamers, or Media Extenders? Internet TV Adapters, or Digital Media Renderers? Thus, we witness just one example of the confusion surrounding all these newfangled, mostly black, little boxes that are intended to hook up to your TV and Internet, and bring the glory of streaming video to your living room. We aim to clean up that confusion, and even suggest which ones deserve a place in your home. (And, to make things easier, we'll just call these things Network Enabled Replay Devices, or NERD, until the industry comes up with something better.)

The concept of centralizing all your digital delights isn't new; companies have been struggling for more than a decade to make this convergence dream a reality. The general paradigm until now has been to slap a media-centric operating system onto a fully-functioning, shrunken PC that ultimately gets squeezed into your home theater setup. The fact that you likely don't own such a device speaks to their common failings. They were either clunky in design, missing critical features, unreliable, or required a degree in advanced computing to set up and use.

Recently, though, the stars have begun to align in ways that may just make that all-in-one dream a real possibility. With the rise of broadband penetration, high-speed wireless home networks, digital TVs, the all-but-total adoption of downloadable media over physical media, and the reluctant willingness of content providers to make their video content available online, it seems inevitable that some lucky manufacturer will design a device that rightly earns the title of King of All Media. (No offense, Howard.) Not to burst your bubble too quickly, but we still think that device has yet to be invented. Sorry. In the meantime, though, there are a few excellent options we'd still be happy to recommend. Before we get started talking about our picks, let's go over a few models we wouldn't recommend... or not to everyone, anyway.

Amid much fanfare, Google announced this summer that it would be licensing Google TV software (based on its phone operating system, Android) to manufacturers. To date, three Google TV devices have been released: a Logitech Revue, a line of Sony TVs and a Sony Blu-ray player. There's a lot to be admired about each of them, and they'll surely get more refined in the future. Still, we're confident in saying that, despite their burgeoning potential, none of these devices compares to the functionality and ease-of-use offered by other NERDs already on the market. Click here to read our full review to better understand our misgivings about the current crop of Google TV offerings.

For the same reasons, we also held off from reviewing the Boxee Box, which has had us holding our collective breaths since it was announced in January. We know it will certainly please savvy techies who know how to transcode, troubleshoot and debug, but, as of now, it simply isn't a solid option for most consumers.

Tech Note: The three boxes we do recommend, then, as viable options for getting Internet-based video onto your TV -- Apple TV, Roku XDS, and WD TV Live Hub -- approach the task from very different angles. To test them, we used 7Mbps DSL plugged into an 802.11n router (except the WD TV Live Hub -- see below), and we were completely stunned by the overall excellent quality of the video and audio, as well as the zippy loading speeds.

Certainly, streaming video won't rival popping in a Blu-ray, but we think even the prickliest curmudgeon would be satisfied by any of these NERDs. Here's our take on how well they perform individually, what benefits they offer (or not), and what consumer would enjoy them most.

Apple TV - $99