Cutting the Cable Cord

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

In their recent ”Dell’s ‘TorrentBox’ takes on Apple TV, Mac mini“, 9to5Mac writes: “While we wait for Apple to add HDMI outputs to the Mac mini, or shake things up with the new-breed of Apple TV, it may be worth taking a look at Dell’s Inspiron Zino HD, which we here at 9to5Mac towers are dubbing the ‘TorrentBox’…”

The Dell Inspiron Zino HD set top box they’re discussing is an interesting and very customizable (including external colors) Windows-based addition to the race and has some great specs (from the Dell site)…

“Introducing the new InspironTM Zino HD mini desktop computer. You’ll be amazed by how many powerful features are inside such a perfectly small 8″ by 8″ square.

• Personalize with 10 optional interchangeable colors and designs
• Its small form factor conveniently fits just about anywhere
• Watch movies with HDMI and optional Blu-ray DiscTM Drive
• Optional discrete graphics, up to 8GB memory1 and up to 1TB2 hard drive for amazing performance
• Meets Energy Star 5.0 Standards”

Base unit price is $229, with a variety of options (including DVD or Blu-ray drive) bringing the price for a fully-loaded model to several times this amount. In any case, looks like something worth checking out and you gotta like the Blu-ray drive option (only $100 more). Anyone seen or used one of these? Let us know your thoughts.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 11:48 am and is filed under hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.