DivX's Cheap Set-Top Streamer

Ubergizmo played with an upcoming set-top networked video box from DivX (there is a company behind the codec) that serves essentially as cheap interface between your PC and your computer or networked drive. The as-yet-unnamed product better be cheap, because these sorts of streaming devices are available in spades, although most of them have been bundled into more expensive boxes that do more processing in the set-top box.

The user interface was quite nice. Much better than what we usually get in this type of device (think Apex, Linksys...), but the crunchy part is that all the user-interface (UI) rendering is done on the PC and sent to the player as very small DivX files! That's a good idea that enables good graphics and UI on cheap hardware.

Finally, DivX has an API that will let users create their own plug-ins/applications to handle multimedia content or to create casual games. I don't think that any other media player does this

DivX's Apple TV, but smarter [Ubergizmo]

[#1 posted by kosmonautbruce , October 16, 2007 9:24 AM]

Just a followup, the first DivX Connected devices to hit retail will be coming out in November from D-Link in the UK, France and Germany.

[#2 posted by Anonymous , October 16, 2007 10:10 AM]

But can it be hacked into something even more fun and useful?!

[#3 posted by kosmonautbruce , October 16, 2007 12:46 PM]

Well, even in beta the DivX Connected platform has an open SDK, and plugins are encouraged, so yes, hacks are both desired and expected.

[#4 posted by kinokino , October 16, 2007 2:10 PM]

were they saying it will not stream files that are located on a network drive?

also, i hope that joost and netflix are thinking about releasing plugins that open their services to this kind of thing.

[#5 posted by strider_mt2k , October 17, 2007 4:32 AM]

I'll be looking on with keen interest!