Boxee Live TV now available for $49 - let the cord cutting begin!
Boxee 1.5 rolls out to Boxee Boxes today and Boxee Live TV tuners have begun shipping! Order one now for your Boxee Box! With the addition of Live TV, the Boxee Box holds the distinction of being the only mainstream set top box …
Context & Ripple Effects
Boxee has spent three years migrating from beloved desktop software to a hardware business: after the public beta in January 2010 and the GigaOM profile of its fanbase in 2009, the company shipped the Boxee Box and stacked it with licensed content — a confirmed Hulu Plus truce in November 2010 and Vudu's HD movie library landing on the device in early 2011. December's announcement that version 1.5 would be the final desktop version made clear the box is now the product.
Today's $49 Live TV tuner completes that pivot. With the 1.5 update rolling out to existing boxes, the Boxee Box becomes what no rival mainstream set-top offers: a single device combining streaming services with an over-the-air broadcast feed — the concrete enabler for the cord-cutting the headline invokes.
First-order effects
- Existing Boxee Box owners can add local broadcast channels for $49 without any cable subscription, turning the device from a streaming-only player into a full live-TV source overnight.
- The tuner gives Boxee a hard differentiator against competing mainstream boxes, none of which currently ship live-TV capability.
Second-order effects
- Rival set-top makers face pressure to match the over-the-air feature or concede the cord-cutter segment to Boxee, since content licensing alone no longer defines the category.
- Broadcasters gain a new distribution path to viewers who dropped pay TV entirely, strengthening the case for free over-the-air signals as a complement to streaming catalogs like the Vudu and Hulu Plus deals already on the box.
Third-order effects
- If live-tuner add-ons prove out, set-top boxes evolve from streaming accessories into genuine pay-TV substitutes, shifting the competitive line from 'which apps do you have' to 'can you replace my cable bill'.
- Pay-TV operators would then face substitution pressure not just from individual streaming services but from cheap hardware that reassembles a channel lineup out of OTA broadcasts plus à-la-carte apps.
The trend: Streaming set-top boxes are absorbing over-the-air tuners to become complete cable replacements, moving cord-cutting from a compromise to a drop-in swap.