Want: Netgear Internet TV Player includes Live Streaming Online TV, BitTorrent

Netgear has announced a standalone internet TV box imaginatively titled the “Netgear Internet TV Player” or ITV2000 at this years CES.

While internet boxes for television sets aren’t new (my Apple TV gets a good daily workout), it’s the extras it offers that makes it a winner.

On top of access to video sites such as YouTube (pretty much standard these days), Google Video, Metacafe, Veoh, Daily Motion, NBC, Reuters, CNN and more, the box also supports BitTorrent and live online television.

BitTorrent built in is naturally exciting most people; TorrentFreak has more in that regard. It’s nice to have, but if it’s not a killer feature for me; if you’re prepared to download content via BitTorrent, most would find the syncing process onto a box not that hard to begin with.

Where this completely rocks is the inclusion of live online television.

There’s thousands of live feeds online today, but precious little way to access them outside of a computer. A plugin years back did bring some of these to the Windows Media Center, but that presumed you had a WMC box attached to your television (I did for a while). Bringing these feeds to a television is like offering Cable or Pay TV, but for free. Sure, you can’t get everything you might want to watch, but there’s still plenty to choose from, and it’s a great selling point.

The ITV2000 is due out in the Northern summer with an affordable price of $200.