EasyBox : New set-top box to pimp your Swiss chalet
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted Aug 24th 2006 6:29PM
posted Aug 24th 2006 6:29PM
The Swiss have an easy life, don't they? Watches, chocolate, skiing -- what else could you want? Surely an EasyBox, this new set-top box straight outta Zürich, would spice up your lonely winter evenings sitting by the fireplace in the living room of your Alpine châlet, no? This hot little number is packed tightly into a 4.5-inch square box that's two inches smaller than a Mac mini -- so small in fact, that it's "extrem kompakt." It also has two easy-access USB ports in the front, which is nice, but surely the Swiss engineers could do better than the paltry one CF reader in the front. It's also frontin' an ultra Euro ghetto fabulous 200 MHz processor, and 128MB of RAM. All in all, the EasyBox seems like a good idea, but might pinch your Swiss bank account a bit at 484 Swiss Francs ($394). For that price you could nearly buy a Mac mini anyway.[Thanks, radraf]
OK, I'll bite.
Does anyone have any idea what this does? Is it a DVR, a cable box, an internet appliance? Somehow I suspect that the answer to this question might have been a useful addition to the story.
Pete
looks like a streaming relay to me.
I'm with Pete....what does this thing do, exactly? All I get from the story is that it's a set-top box. So, it's a box for your set-top. I can find a small box to put on top of my tv for free. If this one actually does something I might be willing to spend money on it.
For those of you who don't live in the EU, France currently has the Freebox (it's actually 2 boxes: a router and a multimedia box attached to your tv) which acts as a DSL modem at 24Mbps, streams digital television to your tv, acts as a digital television receiver for terrestrial broadcasts, has a 4 port switch along with MIMO wireless, has built in VOIP with free calls to 28 countries, the ability to stream TV to your computer from the router and DVDs from your computer to your TV, and all of this for 29.99 euros a month everything included. (http://adsl.free.fr/)
On top of this, Free gives you a fixed IP address, a 1Mbps upload, and the ability to customize your reverse DNS.
Every time I come back to the states and see all of incumbant telephone companies doing everything they can to keep their monoplies and the FCC acting as their puppet, I get extremely annoyed.
*Pete_L_P and h00ligan* This is more like one of those cable boxes or satellite recievers that also can DVR and maybe be used as a computer and all that other crap...