The Boxee live HDTV dongle has landed, and cable companies should take notice: unlike many over-the-air HDTV solutions, the Boxee Live is a complement to the Boxee Box which supplements a vast array of internet-based shows with over-the-air broadcast TV. The logic is simple: according to Boxee, 89 of the 100 top shows are available -for free- over broadcast channels. “The Superbowl, the World Series, the Oscars, the Grammys, presidential debates and addresses, the Olympics… they’re all on broadcast” Boxee says.
And with a price of $49, the Boxee Live stick is probably worth half of the cable bill that most people have. Could this dent the cable TV model that charges us for hundreds of channels – that we don’t watch? It’s hard to tell, but the argument is compelling enough to listen to, and affordable enough to be worth a try, at least in my opinion.
The Boxee Live will ship sometime in January, but it is already up for pre-orders.