Boxee TV Offers A Decent Alternate To Cable

There are a number of people who have had it with cable and satellite. For those types of people, there's a new product, called Boxee TV that can be worth checking out.

Box links to Wi-Fi for streaming

There are a ton of boxes you can choose from that connect to Netflix, Hulu and more and have some sort of DVR function for recording. You just have to hook the box up to Wi-Fi, and you start challenging cable and satellite companies.

There's a brand new one coming out called Boxee Television, according to Time magazine, which takes a slightly different approach. Boxee TV has existed before. The business launched a streaming TV box a couple years ago that failed miserably. However, the new one works a bit different, in that it utilizes cloud storage for DVR recordings.

The new Boxee Television also isn't really terribly expensive, beginning at $99 for the box. Adding DVR services is $14.99 per month, which is more than some competing models but much less than it would cost with satellite or cable.

Has antenna

The Boxee TV receiver has a cable port, so users can use it as a DVR box and thus an accessory. It also has its own antenna, so publicly broadcast stations like NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and PBS can be picked up. It also comes with native applications for Netflix, Vimeo, VUDU, YouTube and Pandora.

The way it differs from similar boxes such as Roku or Netgear, which are cheaper by half, is that Boxee TV doesn't have any on-board memory, nor does it require an external hard drive for storage, such as the recently-released Simple.TV, according to CNET. Storage is done via uploading content to a cloud "locker," which consumers can access at any time. It is a dual-code DVR recorder and can record two programs simultaneously. Customers can't stop live programs, like on TiVo, however.

You do have to pay the $14.99 monthly fee, which most likely will not cost you short term loans, if you would like to get the DCR service, though it is nice because there are no memory needs.

Not every person has access

The DVR services on the Boxee TV are pretty exciting, but only some cities have access to it at the moment, though the company does have intends to expand that in the next year, according to TG Daily. The service is offered in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York and Los Angeles at the moment.

Everyone else can only use it as a streaming device, until DVR services are available everywhere. At that it fails, since other set-top boxes for those who want to cut the cord are much cheaper and have more or the same streaming native apps.