XStreamHD Satellite Media Package Shipping Soon

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The XStreamHD devices have been circulating around for a while, with a few press releases and a press conference featuring Hollywood star Michael Douglas. But after two years of vapor, the company has finally begun taking pre-orders on bundled packages that will include their XStreamHD media gear.

The XStreamHD platform appears to be a networked system of devices that you would buy bundled, including a home centralized NAS, multiple receivers and a satellite dish. Unlike Rokus, Boxee Boxes and other cheap media streaming boxes, the video content will be beamed down to the XStreamHD media server via Satellite. You would buy content from their XStreamHD platform, either movies or TV shows. That content, from there, would be pushed wirelessly to up to four DLNA-compatible set-top devices, and of course, XStreamHD will be selling those too.

While a bundled home media server with TV receivers is nothing special, the real attraction here is the satellite dish. This isn’t your father’s slow, satellite internet. This is going to be television-style C-band transmissions. However, there will be a delay. XStreamHD has likened their system more like Netflix’s queue over a Youtube-like video-on-demand.

As I said earlier, XStreamHD was first unveiled two years ago (movie star Michael Douglas was an early investor in the project and spoke at an early press conference). The slow-roll out likely has to do with #1 – the deals with the movie and TV studios and #2 – the complexity of the satellites. In researching this story, I found conflicting reports from XStreamHD’s press releases, once they said they were going to lease bandwidth from existing COMSAT satellites, and in another, they said they were going to launch their own satellites.

They haven’t announced any content partners, and obviously, that’s key to the whole success of the platform. Nobody is going to buy into a satellite-based system where the satellites aren’t beaming down anything worth watching. They have, however, begun taking pre-orders for the April 2010 launch date. They’re selling the satellite gear, bundled with 1TB or 2TB home media servers and a few HD receivers. The bundles will vary in price, from $400 to $500.