Aug 4, 2009 01:35 PM
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The Moxi HD, everyone's favorite not-TiVo, has been joined by a media extender box, alongside a fresh software update, which among other things allows the Moxi to offload video to Lacie's 6TB drive clusters. That's over 1000 hours of HDTV.
But first, the extender: The Moxi Mate is a small $399 ($199 for now, if purchased in a bundle or by an existing Moxi HD customer) satellite box that plays back recordings from your Moxi HD from afar, over your home network. It's not all that feature-rich—no wi-fi built in, no scheduling of recordings, no support for more than one Moxi Mate at a time—but if your goal is to stream your Moxi library around the house, at least you now have a way to do it.
About that library. Although the hardware on the main box hasn't changed, Moxi's software update, which should push out tonight, gives your box the gumption it needs to take onboard much larger drives via the e-SATA port, as well as a new optional browsing interface called Grid Guide, which gives users a more familiar, cable-guide-like experience than Moxi's novel—but good—regular UI. Another, smaller update is Switched Digital Video support by way of an adapter, if your cable company's into that kind of thing.
At any rate, the core offering may have grown an extender, but it hasn't really changed. The whole system has the same strengths—a strong interface, good performance, and clear superiority over cableco boxes—as well as the same weaknesses—dependency on PlayOn for online streaming, the learning curve— so unless Moxi Mate tips the scales for you, or you've got $1000+ to drop on storage to build an absurdly large video bank, your current impressions probably still stand. [Moxi]
Send an email to John Herrman, the author of this post, at jherrman@gizmodo.com.
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