Curious how that whole streaming video set-top box business is working out? Apple and Roku are happy to brag.

On Monday, Roku chief executive Anthony Wood told Business Insider’s Dan Frommer that the company expects to sell its millionth Roku box by the end of this year, two and a half years after the first devices launched. He also said that when Apple TV arrived, Roku sales doubled thanks to heightened awareness of streaming set-top boxes. (Preemptive price cuts couldn’t have hurt.)

On Tuesday, Apple put out a press release crowing about sales of Apple TV. The company expects new Apple TV sales to hit 1 million later this week, and noted that iTunes users are renting and purchasing more than 400,000 TV shows and 150,000 movies per day. For comparison, the original iPhone took 74 days to hit 1 million sales, while Apple TV will take, at most, 86 days to reach the same milestone this week.

Obviously, Apple TV is beating Roku. That was to be expected given Apple’s reputation and retail presence. Still, the 1 million sales mark is a good sign for any gadget, and both boxes are getting there.

I don’t know how many of those set-top boxes are being used to replace subscription TV outright — probably not many — but if Apple TV and Roku get into more homes, the odds of cable-cutting are only going to increase.

For now, content owners and cable companies maintain that cord-cutting is a minor phenomenon, limited mostly to middle-aged, middle-class people who don’t stream a lot of media, not the tech-savvy geeks you might expect. This observation will lose validity if set-top boxes go mainstream.

Nice, very detailed comparison review of Roku and Apple TV by Dan Rayburn (who gives the nod to Roku).

My new Technologizer column for TIME.com is up–it’s a look at the new wave of Internet-TV boxes for the living room that are arriving over the next couple of months, and it focuses on the new Roku, since that’s the only one I’ve personally kicked back with so far. I mention the new Apple TV too, of course–FOX News’s Clayton Morris has one in his possession, and he likes it and thinks it’ll become “a quiet hit” for Apple.

Now that Roku’s out and Apple TV is just about here, the next big questions for this category all rotate around Google TV and the Boxee Box–both of which aim for a more feature-packed, comprehensive approach to Internet TV than the keep-it-simple-and-cheap Roku and Apple TV. I hope to try ‘em all before the holidays are here.

When Apple unveiled its new iPods and related stuff a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t pay much attention to the new video-streaming option called Airplay. Over at 9to5Mac, Seth Weintraub is making the case (argued earlier by Gizmodo’s Joel Johnson) that Airplay is a big deal and a core component of Apple’s strategy for mattering in the living room.

What a difference a year makes. When Boxee and D-Link unveiled the Boxee Box  in late 2009, things were pretty quiet on the Internet-TV-in-the-living-room front. Now, after a bit of a delay, the companies are getting ready to ship the Box in November. And it’ll compete against the all-new Apple TV, set-top boxes and TVs based on Google TV, the first devices that support Hulu Plus, and a bevy of other methods of getting video off the Internet and onto an HDTV. Little Boxee, in other words, will face daunting competition from some pretty formidable rivals.

I met with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen and D-Link Director of Consumer Marketing Brent Collins this weekend to get a sneak peek of a nearly-final Boxee Box. And you know what? Despite the avalanche of competition it’ll face, it still looks pretty cool.

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I’m sorry I wasn’t at Apple’s music event today to cover it live. I had fun watching it via Apple’s live video stream from the lobby bar here at the Grand Hyatt in Berlin, though. (I give the experience a B- from a technical standpoint: Eighty percent of the time, the stream worked well, fifteen percent I got audio but the picture froze, five percent it misbehaved in other ways. Then again, I was on iffy hotel Wi-Fi, so the glitchiness might have been on my end rather than Apple’s.)

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It looks like Apple’s trying to put down the legacy of Apple TV as the company tries a new push into the living room.

Engadget’s got some more rumors on the project, which will reportedly be dubbed iTV when it’s revealed this fall. We previously heard that Apple was slimming down the television set-top with iPhone-like specs, including an A4 processor and 16 GB of flash memory. Now, Josh Topolsky’s unnamed tipster says iTV will definitely support apps. Whether they’ll be iTV originals or iPhone/iPad converts is unknown.

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Nick Bilton of the New York Times has talked to sources that say Apple is cooking up a new version of Apple TV–but the scuttlebutt is pretty darn vague at this point.

Apple has dusted the cobwebs off of Apple TV with a new software upgrade that introduces a redesigned user interface, which is intended to make it easier to play favorites. iTunes 9.0.2 was released in conjunction with the update.

Apple TV 3.0 has a redesigned main menu that adds shortcuts to recently rented or purchased movies. TV shows, music, podcasts, photos and YouTube are also front and center.

In addition, iTunes extras and iTunes LP content can now be played on the Apple TV in full screen. Genius mixes and Internet radio can now be played through home theater systems. The iTunes upgrade adds HE-AAC playback and encoding.

I still wonder when Apple will start a subscription service. For the moment, my colleague Harry McCracken has largely forsaken his Apple TV for a Roku, because his Roku gives him unlimited content through Netflix.

Apple TV is a nice device, but it is not, as Harry has stated, “an iPod-like transcendent hit.” I’m sure it would work well paired with one of those snazzy new 27″ iMacs, but very little (other than iTunes synchronization) differentiates Apple TV from its competitors. How about it, Steve?

There has been rumors abound about Apple getting into the TV business, and selling an all-in-one unit. I would be happy to forsake a box for a TV that has Apple software built in. My tiny Manhattan living room doesn’t have much space for more stuff.

Apple TV 3.0 is a free download for existing customers; new 160GB units cost $229. Last month, Apple slashed the Apple TV’s price, and increased capacity.

I can’t remember if anyone onstage at Apple’s press event last week even mentioned the words “Apple TV.” It certainly didn’t announce any major news associated with it. But the product which Apple loves to tell us is a mere hobby is now a better buy. Apple has discontinued the 40GB model (the one I own) and cut the price for the much more capacious 160GB version from $329 down to $229, the price it had been charging for 40GB.

Depending on how you use Apple TV, you might or might not find the 4X jump in capacity for your buck to be a boon–if all you do is rent the occasional movie, store a typical music collection, and stream stuff from other computers around your house, 40GB was plenty. 160GB starts to sound like enough space for a sizable movie collection (although it’s still teensy compared to the space offered by pricier media services such as HP’s MediaSmart Home Server.)

Apple TV is a fun and well-designed product, but it hasn’t turned out to be an iPod-like transcendent hit. Then again, neither has anything else involving bringing the Internet into the living room. I find myself using Roku’s $99 box more than Apple TV, mostly because its Netflix Watch Instantly integration lets it provide all-you-can-view access to a ton of content for one low price. Other than video podcasts, most of Apple TV’s content is priced per title, making it impractical to gorge on movies and TVs as you can do with Roku. I wonder if Apple has ever considered offering some sort of Netflix-like subscription plan, at least for a subset of stuff?

Time for a T-Poll:

Alas, poor Apple TV. Its manufacturer likes to treat nearly everything it makes as both a technological breakthrough and sales blockbuster, but when it discusses Apple TV at all, it usually dismisses it as a “hobby.” As New TeeVee’s Chris Albrecht points out, the little white set-top box got nary a mention during Apple’s financial conference call yesterday.

Apple TV is actually pretty good–I own one and use it with a TV that has no other means of receiving programming–but it’s a nice product in a category that may never change the world in the way that the Mac, iPod, and iPhone have. There just seem to be a limited number of folks out there who want Internet-based entertainment in the living room enough to go through the cost and hassle of installing a box. Apple TV competitors Vudu and Roku–both of which I also like–face the same issue, but as the products of much smaller companies, they presumably can be counted as successes even if sales never explode. Apple, on the other hand, is used to selling its gadgets by the tens of millions.

When you come down to it, though, Apple TV isn’t about being a box: It’s about giving you access to tons of content on your TV. The box itself is an encumbrance, especially if your entertainment center is already as crammed with stuff as mine is. Wouldn’t Apple TV be cooler if it went boxless–by being built into new TVs?

This isn’t a new idea–in fact, it’s one of those persistent Apple rumors that hasn’t come true to date, but might someday. In its usual form, it involves Apple getting into the HDTV biz itself. I’d like to see that happen, but I can think of more reasons why Apple might not want to make TVs than ones why it would. TVs are a commodity; TVs come in too many sizes; TVs wouldn’t give Apple true control over the user experience. (There’s no way the company could completely disintermediate the cable company or mask all of its bad interface decisions.)

But even if Apple doesn’t want to make TVs, it could integrate Apple TV into TVs–by offering the platform as a feature which TV companies can integrate into their sets, in a fashion similar to Yahoo’s cool Internet TV platform. You gotta think that TV manufacturers would jump at the chance to sell an iTunes-ready TV. And when I buy a new HDTV, built-in access to the music and movies I’ve already bought from Apple would be a meaningful selling point.

TV makers might not want to build a hard drive into their sets to accommodate Apple TV, but that’s okay–another unfulfilled Apple rumor involves something called iTunes Replay, which would store your entertainment on a distant server and stream it to your devices on demand. Such as…your TV!

Yes, I know that Apple has a lousy track record when it comes to putting its technology into other companies’ products. (Exhibit A: the Motorola iTunes phone.) But it surely wants to establish an outpost in our living rooms, in a way that goes beyond being a mere hobby. I’m willing to be surprised–and knowing Apple, I probably have this all wrong–but the moment, I can’t think of a more logical way for it to do that than to build the iTunes experience right into our TVs.

I’ve been remiss in not updating you on my experiment in using an Apple TV with Boxee’s media-center software as a substitute for my pricey Comcast service. “Life Without Comcast” may be a misleading title, since I haven’t tried to go cold turkey–instead, I’ve done some of my TV watching via cable, and some via the Internet, and have been comparing the two experiences as I did so.

So far, my main conclusion is that these two ways to consume video content are just…different. To wit:

Pro-Comcast Points:

Cable isn’t a victim of the Hulu-Boxee debacle. The single thing that played the biggest role in making my Apple TV/Boxee setup a plausible Comcast substitute was the fact that it let my watch Hulu, the Web’s leading source of broadcast TV programming. Last week, however, Hulu reluctantly asked Boxee to remove its Hulu support, and Boxee complied. End result: A lot of mainstay cable TV programming is no longer available on Boxee. True, it still has Joost, CBS, and other content providers, and Apple TV offers a wealth of for-pay movies and TV shows (as well as some stuff for free, in podcast form). But if I’d known that I wouldn’t be able to view Hulu on my TV, I would have been a lot less gung-ho about this whole experiment.

Cable is still a must for news junkies. Live streaming of broadcast news coverage over the Internet is rare, and often iffy when it does occur. Podcasts are available of some shows, but they’re always delayed, and often cut down. So I’m still doing much of my consuming of news via various all-news channels. And when major stories break, I still want the option of turning on the TV and surfing the coverage on multiple stations.

Cable is a heck of a lot closer to being glitch-free. Most means of watching video across the Internet are subject to at least occasional hiccups, and some are crippled by technical problems–especially when wireless networking is involved. Even Netflix’s slick and appealing Watch Instantly service has its issues: I tried to watch Network via it on my TiVo HD (see below) last night, and the soundtrack was out of sync with the image by about three seconds. With cable, I can be reasonably confident that the stuff I want to watch will work–and keep working until I’m done watching it.

HD is cool. And while I can get some HD content on Apple TV, it’s still a relative rarity. (Blocky YouTube-like video, on the other hand, is in plentiful supply.) When I want to watch high-def, Comcast has far more to offer.

Anti-Comcast points:

Financially, cable is woefully inefficient. At least for someone like me who doesn’t really gorge on TV. For every hour of cable programming I watch and enjoy, I’m paying for hundreds of stations of absolutely zero interest to me. (Sorry, Fox Soccer Channel, MTV Jams, ZeeTV, and Sprout.) The movies and TV shows that Apple delivers through Apple TV aren’t free, but they’re all a la carte.

Cable has a short attention span. Yesterday, I set up a TiVo HD, a few months after my beloved old standard-def TiVo more or less croaked on me. As part of get it up and running, I had to program it to record stuff I like–and I was startled by how many of the old sitcoms I dig are no longer available on cable. Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and Bob Newhart are off the air…but they’re all on Hulu. And even if I can’t watch them on my Apple TV anymore, they’re available on my laptop.

Cable is available in one place. On the TV in my living room–unless I pay for extra set-top boxes. Or use a Slingbox (which, full disclosure, I do) to put it elsewhere. All the Internet TV I can get on Boxee is also available on all of my computers. Some of it’s on my iPhone, too, and over time I’m sure that all of it will be phone-friendly.

Cable is tied to a schedule. Yes, Comcast offers some shows and movies via its OnDemand video-on-demand service, and you can rent a Comcast DVR or buy something like a TiVo to watch your favorite stuff at any time. But you’re still going to miss some stuff you wanted to see because you forgot about it, or were busy when it was on. On the Web, by contrast, the default state of video programming is on demand: You can watch the last episode of Late Night With Conan O’Brien whenever you feel like it, and even if your DVR hasn’t been set to record Conan since the last millennium.

Bottom line: So far, at least, this little adventure hasn’t left me feeling like I can drop cable without missing it. At least not yet, and not via Boxee in its de-Hulued state. I’m continuing with the experiment, though, and will continue to write about it. You gotta think that Internet TV is going to evolve and improve rapidly over the next year or two, while cable is likely to stay pretty much like it is today.

Oh, and I am considering dropping the Comcast phone service I signed up for when I moved into my new home last summer–but that’s a subject for another post….

Okay, now this just stinks: Boxee, the cool software that lets you pipe Internet TV and other digital media onto a TV set, is doing away with its support for Hulu, the most significant purveyor of streaming versions of broadcast TV programming. I take the move personally, since I recently bought an Apple TV in large part to run Boxee on it, and in particular to watch Hulu.

But I’m not mad at Boxee (who’s in a tough spot, and whose support for Hulu was unofficial rather than based on a partnership), and I don’t think I’m irked with Hulu, either. The latter company’s blog is explaining that its content providers were ticked off over their stuff being available on Hulu and therefore forced the issue. Minor kudos to Hulu for addressing what’s happening on the blog rather than pretending that it’s not a big deal for Boxee fans.

(Side note: I don’t know whether there’s any connection between this and the news that Ed Oswald reported on earlier today involving Hulu programming disappearing from TV.com.)

The instinctive response, of course, is to start slamming those content providers as clueless Hollywood types who don’t get the Internet and hate their TV-consuming customers. And it is a shame that they’re depriving Boxee users of their stuff: If the whole business model of Hulu involves monetizing TV by supporting it with ads, you’d think that Boxee eyeballs would be just as valuable as any others that watch those ads. Maybe more so, given that anybody who’s an early adopter of Boxee is likely a particularly hardcore TV fan.

Neither Boxee’s nor Hulu’s commentary on this development explains why content owners don’t want their shows on Boxee. My guess is that A) they’re uneasy with having stuff show up in an environment they don’t control; and B) they’re still not comfortable with Internet TV showing up on TV, where it competes more directly with the old-fashioned broadcast incarnations of the same programs. As well-done as Hulu is, I suspect that it’s still a pretty lousy advertising medium compared to prime time. (The Hulu shows I catch, at least, are often supported by public-service messages rather than big-name sponsors.)

Spo short-term, I’m disgruntled over not being able to watch Hulu on Boxee; long-term, my question is this: Do Hulu’s content providers have a problem with Boxee in particular or Hulu-on-a-TV in general? My hope is that Hulu is actively working on other means of bringing its nifty service to the living room; if Hollywood is short-sighted enough to nix that, then by all means let the name-calling begin.

And hey, does anyone want to buy a slightly-used Apple TV?

Visions of the “digital living room” having been dancing in the heads of industry leaders for over a decade, but no one solution has broken into the mainstream. Now, Apple may be preparing for a significant push based on the success of iTunes and the iPod. Or so predicts analyst Gene Munster of investment bank Piper Jaffray, which thinks that Apple will give it a shot by introducing its own brand of networked television.

Piper Jaffray’s report says that indications from Apple’s management, coupled with Apple’s DVR and TV-related patent filings and partnership with LG, have led it to conclude that Apple will introduce a connected television to the market in 2011.

The Apple TV (not to be confused with Apple TV) could be an integrated all-in-one device that combines a Blu-ray/DVD player, music playback, cable box, and DVR to synchronize recorded programming with Macs, iPhones and iPods. It may include gaming features, according to the report.

Apple would be wise to capitalize on the ecosystem that it has created around iTunes, and its strong brand. Apple has already laid the groundwork to introduce an actual television with its Apple TV digital media receiver. Synchronization has been key to Apple’s success, and Apple has made Apple TV work well with iTunes.

Piper Jaffray noted that Apple TV sales were already growing substantially, and that Apple may sell as many as 6 million units this year.

Research analysts have a mediocre record at best when it comes to predicting what Apple will and won’t do. Still, an elegant, consolidated Apple media device would simplify the tangle of wires that many of us have in our living rooms with the added bonus of a wealth of content contained in its iTunes media library.

If the price is right, it sounds like it could be a winner to me. But the real question is whether it sounds that way to Apple.

I thought I was being weird and bleeding-edge by attempting to dump cable TV for watching sites like Hulu through Boxee’s open-source media center software on an Apple TV. But the New York Times has a nifty story today on Boxee and its fans–and once something’s in the Times, it’s presumably well on its way to going mainstream.The Times says that the Boxee-on-Apple TV software has been downloaded 100,000 times to date, which suggests that I have a lot of company already.

I’ll be writing more about my experiences soon, but my overarching takeaway at the moment is that Internet TV on a TV is, above all, different from cable–better in some respects, and worse than others. Of course, Internet TV is still busy being born–Hulu is less than a year old, and Boxee is still in alpha. Cable TV has a head start of a few decades. But if there’s one thing that undeniable about the Internet, it’s that it can catch up with old ways of doing things really quickly. And then go far beyond them…

Maybe the title of this new Technologizer series is unfair. I don’t despise Comcast, the company who I’ve been paying for cable TV service for the past six months. (Until then, at my old pad, I was a DirecTV man.) But I don’t love it, either–especially the part about paying it a large amount of money each month when I watch maybe .000001% of what it offers.

And oh, did I mention the remote control that came with my Comcast high-def box? Worst piece of technology I use regularly–every time I pick it up, my blood begins to boil a little.

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