Please.

The grouch ;)

I'd love to have one. Plan to stream my TV to Arkansas when visiting family - yeah thats a strange locale all right.

I like the football talk - just wish there was more Big12 love from that Ben guy ;)
Seriously though - sports and HD go hand-in-hand so it is very appropriate to the podcast and EngadgetHD... And I would not take a HDTV over a vacation-at least most vacations.

Regarding the SageTV HD200 - it is actually new hardware compared to the HD100 - faster CPU, double memory which means faster UI etc. And while most will use it as an extender, the standalone mode gives a person who might want a media player to connect to their network for streaming, and includes online video (YouTube, Google Video and other online podcasts) built in as well as UPnP which gets you Hulu as well with PlayOn support.

Great job on the podcast as always from both Steven and Ben - keep up the good work.

"What good is a HTPC without CableCards?"
You can get the HD content without CableCard (and without CableCards restrictions) with the Hauppauge HD-PVR. So I would say it's a lot of good for me at least.

Sigh... The files are not transcoded it works just like the HD100 which streams the content and plays back the original format.

And I wasn't the one comparing the Xbox with XBMC (not XBMC itself) to this device. I was responding to someone who was trying to do that....

I think XBMC on the proper hardware is very good, but if you're comparing software I doubt you'll find a code or video format that it plays and SageTV doesn't. Regardless this is about a hardware extender not the software.

Darren,
You must never sleep and probably take the laptop with you everywhere cause you pick up EVERY gadget-related story there is. I continue to be amazed by the number and quality of the posts you do.... So good job!

Now, about the 2wire box.
I'm not really interested in another box, but I am interested in how well this device works and how it compares to the Netflix boxes out there. I was surprised to see this from Blockbuster - pleasantly but still surprised.

That was my point. This box does just that - plug it in, it can automatically search for media on your network and then play any of it directly without any transcoding at all. Software is built-in and upgradable via firmware updates and if you ever decide to go further with it you can install SageTV software on a XP, Vista, WHS, MAC or Linux computer and it can act as a fully-functional extender with LiveTV and recorded TV as well.

I know the Xbox and XBMC and it has a nice interface, but this thing is way above the old XBox capabilities.

TavisJohn,
You are streaming ANYTHING that goes across a network - its not reencoding the files - its just playing them so yes it is playing them directly. I think you're confusing something like Divx Connected or AppleTV that requires files to be re-encoded on the fly to play back non-supported file types. This box does NOT require you to do that.....

Audio Codecs I've seen confirmed in the devicee manual
MPEG Audio
AAC
AC3
WMA
FLAC
DTS passthrough

Video Formats:
AVI
ASF
Mpeg
MKV
QuickTime
MP4

Video Codecs:
Mpeg-1/2
Mpeg 4
ASP
H.264
WMV9
VC1

If you prefer AppleTV that's certainly your choice, but seriously the AppleTV isn't even close to being capable of doing what the SageTV HD100 or this new HD200 can do.