Well it’s finally here.   2010 – the year by which so many films predicted humanity zipping around in flying cars, travelling regularly throughout our solar system, and working alongside artificially intellengent computers.  While technology hasn’t quite kept up with fiction, it’s still progressing nicely.

Consumers in 2009 gained more choice and available features in the mobile and PC operating system, smartphone, eBook, and digital media player markets – amongst several others.   And 2010 promises to continue this trend with renewed vigor as consumers use and adopt novel technologies to make their lives more economically efficient, easier, and more fulfilling.   So in the tradition of the new year and the adoption of new technologies (and also to save some cash in the long term), I’ve made a resolution to ditch cable TV by year’s end.

While this goal would be pretty easy to achieve on a personal level, given that an increasing amount of my “content consumption” comes from non-traditional sources like YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and various other text based informational RSS feeds or Twitter, a significant portion of this task’s challenge lies in keeping any transition as transparent as possible to the other members of my immediate family.  TV shows that are currently “captured” by our cable company supplied DVR must remain accessible by some means under any new system.   My massive, multi-terabyte library of personal digital media, currently pumped to my home’s TV’s using an aging TVix M-4100SH, must remain viable without requiring conversion.   And future expansion capabilities, as Internet based TV further develops and evolves, is imperative.

While we’ve discussed bridging the gap between Internet based content and the means of delivering that content to today’s HDTV’s before, there finally seems to be a few solutions coming close to coursely meeting this goal.   D-Link’s Boxee Box integrates several online sources into an easy user interface.   The maturing Home Theater PC market finally seems ready to compete with the swarms of digital media streamers fighting for the media rack shelf space of early adopters.   And today, ahead of CES, Syabas announced it’s PopCorn Hour PopBox digital streamer with enhanced user interface.

The $130 PopBox is an “open platform settop box that streams music, movies, photos, games, social media updates and more to today’s HDTVs”.  Like it’s big brother, the PopCorn Hour C-200, the PopBox supports virtually every type of digital media available.  With up to 1080p high definition playback via the device’s component and HDMI video ports, PopCorn Hour has partnered with over 20 online content providers for the PopBox, including Netflix, Blip.tv, and PhotoBucket.  Additionally, the PopBox’s open platform, based on Syabas’ Digital Audio & Video Input Device (DAVID) Platform Architecture, will allow developers to create “rich object based interactive graphics applications utilizing API’s to create TV experiences out of any popular Internet based media experience”.

PopBox Media Streamer

Unlike many other digital media players, the PopBox doesn’t support an internal SATA hard drive on which media files can be stored.  Rather, it has two USB 2.0 ports to which external storage devices can be connected.  It has an built-in SD card slot and is shipped with an included 2GB SD card.  Obviously, the device can pull media from UPnP devices on a home network or NAS, in addition to Internet based services.

With its improved user interface and the expandability offered by PopApps, the PopBox is poised to do for TV what the iPhone did for cell phones.  If priced competitively to compete with products from Roku and Western Digital coupled with proper distribution and a viral wave of positive feedback, the PopBox could finally allow people to cancel their legacy cable TV subscriptions for the more diverse offerings of the Internet.  So there’s hope that my 2010 resolution can be met…