Boxee Box Adds SlingPlayer To Its Lineup

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A strange sort of addition landed on the Boxee Box, as Boxee engineers gave the devices a fresh upgrade in the form of a built-in SlingPlayer app. And, while it’s seldom good form to look a gift horse in the mouth, more than a few folks started wondering what it was even doing there.

Adding the SlingPlayer to the Boxee Box means that users can now stream from devices hooked to it, like a cable DVR, or a different media hub on the same network. The new version adds Sling’s newest program guide, but aside from that, at last report, this will be much the same experience as any other SlingPlayer system. In fact, you’ll still need a 600 Kbps connection to stream in standard definition or a two meg connection to stream in HD.

Though the big question here was, why give a device that’s meant to be in one place like the Boxee Box the capability to stream to other rooms. And for their part, Boxee thinks that it would be useful inside the same building, like having your setup in the living room be able to route to, say, the kitchen or the laundry room, or for allowing people who get television service at their home to transfer it out to, say, a guest house or a break room at work.

As for pricing on the Boxee app, there wasn’t much mention given to that. Some have suggested it may be a free upgrade, which would make some sense given that, at last report, Boxee Box systems cost about as much as a Slingbox Solo. And for those of you interested, you should be able to get it today.

Personally, I’m not sure just how much utility this will actually add–upgrades should be more devoted to improving content available than services like this–but for some it may be useful. And if the upgrade is a free one as some have suggested, it’s more likely to do good than get in the way.

But what do you guys think here? Any Boxee Box owners out there think that adding SlingPlayer to their Box will give it more value? Or do you think this is a largely unnecessary upgrade that will be too much of a niche product for most users? No matter what you think, the comments section is waiting for your opinion below, and we always love hearing from you, so head on down and tell us what you think!