Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Best Buy...will start selling movies sans-disk to web connected devices later this month, starting with LG Blu-ray players and home theater in a box systems, followed by Samsung's internet connected home theater equipment and of course the house Insignia brand. As planned, it will have "first run" movies for sale as soon as they arrive on DVD, with rentals for $2.99 - $3.99 per movie and purchases at $9.99 to $19.99, including HD titles and some available in 1080p. Apparently the name game is how Best Buy plans to sneak boxes with its store embedded through other retailers, we'll see how Wal-mart / VUDU, Amazon and the rest respond to the challenge."

For some of us, the disassociation of the service with Best Buy is probably for the best. I don't thing there is much of a concern that other retailers will avoid selling this product just because of the built in service. After all, it is not too difficult to find Netflix enabled devices at retail and on-line from a variety of retailers.

"Consumers are spending hours on their PC watching videos online. comScore recently reported that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during the month. YouTube alone had 5 billion video views in July 2008. More than 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 80 videos per viewer. VuNow will enrich the online video viewing experience by bringing the videos directly on TV instead of the PC. You can enjoy movies, TV shows, sports, live events, special interests, travel and user-generated content, from content owners, content aggregators and video portals around the world! You may be surprised by what’s out there on the Internet!"

YouTube, vtap, CinemaNow, videos stored on your LAN, this lilliputian device seems to handle it all. It even downloads videos via BitTorrent. The best part? It starts at $99. It comes in Standard and High Definition models and connects to your network via Ethernet, though a WiFi module is available. If it does all that the manufacturer, Verismo Networks, claims it will do at that price, it definately looks like the video playback device to get, trouncing AppleTV, Windows Media Center and the Netflix player. Unfortunately, it doesn't record TV, but it looks like it can act your main gateway to watching movies and videos. Anyone else as excited about this wee playback box as I am?