In a last minute decision, Boxee has decided to power its upcoming set-top device with an Intel chip instead of Nvidia's second-generation Tegra SoC. Apparently, the Tegra 2 just couldn't cut it in the lab. "The major problem we had with the Tegra 2 was support for high-profile HD playback," Boxee said. Clarifying further that, while the Tegra 2 is fine for VC-1, it can't handle H.264 – a widely used codec among video streaming sites.
The Boxee Box will ship with an Intel Atom CE4100 SoC capable of playing 1080p H.264 media at 60 frames per second. Apart from that, the specs look identical to what we saw earlier this year at CES, including Flash 10.1 support, the ability to play content from local storage or the Web, and your standard array of input/output connectivity. US and Canadian customers can currently preorder the Boxee Box for $199 via Amazon.