If you were interested in buying Vizio’s new $99 Co-Star streaming media box and missed out on the pre-order, the good news is you don’t have to wait much longer for them to be back in stock. While the Vizio.com website currently says ‘Temporarily sold out”, Vizio let me know that they will open their website back up for orders on September 9th. And if that batch gets sold out, the company will have more in stock, available for ordering on September 18th. So check out my hands-on review of the device, put the date on your calendar and get ready to place your order for this nice little box. And if you want to try and win one for free, you can entering my drawing, where I am giving one away.

Over the past few weeks, I’d been hearing a lot of rumors that Juniper was planning to exit the CDN business. As you may recall, Juniper entered the content delivery game in early 2010 when it acquired Ankeena and the technology became Juniper’s Media Flow portfolio. In a call with the company last week, Juniper said they are not exiting the business, but are changing their focus and are dropping BitGravity’s CDN technology that they licensed earlier in the year.

While Juniper gets lumped into those who offer CDN services, like other vendors, Juniper develops and delivers gear that customers use to deliver content more efficiently. In the case of Juniper, its Media Flow delivery products could be used within a CDN, within a managed video delivery network, or it could be used for transparent caching, depending on which customer we’re talking about.

Juniper made it clear to me that its Media Flow products aren’t going anywhere. It will still deliver the fundamental caching and content delivery products that are the core of its Media Flow portfolio, for customers to use as transparent caches, for multi-screen delivery or even CDNs and will continue to work with its ecosystem partners who are solution providers and offer solutions in this space. But the company will be making some changes with regards to where they focus their efforts on CDN products going forward.

The company said they came to the decision that building a complete CDN solution didn’t make a lot of sense for a company like Juniper, so instead they are focusing their efforts on their strengths: the core Media Flow content delivery and caching engine. This will be the focus for the company and they will continue to invest, develop, enhance and sell the solution. The service management technology acquired from BitGravity, and some other CDN-related technology projects that were underway will no longer be a focus for the company.

What this means for customers is that they can continue to buy Juniper’s Media Flow products just as they were doing today. But if you were holding out for Juniper’s end-to-end CDN solution with service management, you are out of luck—but for everyone else its business as usual.

To me, I don’t see this change in strategy as a negative for Juniper. Very few vendors truly have an end-to-end solution, for any service, and having a focused product strategy is a big key to being successful. Juniper’s approach is to focus on edge services and caching, which are very important pieces needed for what’s taking place with regards to content delivery in the last-mile.

Earlier today, a new $99 Google TV box was announced by Hisense, a company that sells flat screen TVs for cheap, mostly in stores like Walmart and Costco. Named the Hisense Pulse with Google TV, the company says the box will ship in November and will have support for 1080p, built-in WiFi, HDMI in and out, ethernet and a double sided remote control featuring a built-in touchpad and dedicated Netflix button on one side and a QWERTY keyboard on the other. The company says the box is small, with the dimensions being 4.5″ x 1.4″ in size.

If you ask me, this sounds like the exact same box that Vizio just released, the Co-Star, which I just reviewed. To date, it’s the only box in the market with HDMI pass-through and allows the overlay of live TV, but it sounds as if they won’t be the only device with this feature much longer, once the Hisense Pulse comes out. The question I have though is what the build quality will be like with the Hisense Pulse. Some people may compare Vizio to Hisnese and say they both make cheap TVs, but that’s not accurate.

Vizio is known for making good quality gear, affordable. Hisense is knowing for making ok quality TVs, cheap. Most have probably never heard of Hisense before and while their TVs are in some cases $100-$400 cheaper than a Vizio or Samsung, the picture quality is not as good as the major brands. When their 40″ 1080p LCD TV is selling for $299 at big box retailers, you know they had to skimp in the quality somewhere. Hisense’s TVs do get good reviews online, but most of the positive remarks are the price, with many saying things like, “not as good as my Samsung“, and “it is not the best out there in terms of picture quality.”

I’ve seen many Hisense’s TVs at the store before, but have never tested one at home, in my lab, so I’ll have to get one and see how it performs against my Vizio, LG, Sony, Samsung and Panasonic models. All this aside, the biggest hurdle Hisense will have with their $99 Google TV box is that most have never heard of the company, so they are going to have to spend a lot of money to market the device. But it does look like more Google TV boxes on the cheap are going to be coming to the market, which is great for consumers.

Last week, after I posted my review of Vizio’s new $99 Co-Star streaming box, I got a lot of questions from readers wanting me to comment on certain features of the box. So I’ve made a list of the questions, done some additional testing and have provided answers to them below. I’m also giving one of these boxes away, so go here to enter the drawing.

[In addition to these questions, I also got a few others that I sent to Vizio asking for more details. I’ll update this post as soon as they respond.]

Do you know when the next wave of Co-Star’s will be released?
Vizio’s Co-Star device started to be delivered last week, to those who pre-ordered from Vizio.com. Vizio said they sold out of the original run of boxes made just for the pre-order, but said the box will soon be up for general availability. From what I have heard, it sounds like the Co-Star will be generally available in September.

What kind of chip is in the box and what processing power does it have?
iFixit took the box apart and says it is using a Marvell Armada 1500 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor, with just 4GB of flash memory to store everything for the OS and Google TV platform. Vizio says their box is so robust that the processor can also support the playback of 3D content, although I haven’t tested that yet.

How does it handle local content playback? Is it better than the Boxee Box?
The Co-Star has excellent video format and codec support, more than the Boxee Box and has pros/cons over Western Digital’s WD TV Live. If you want to playback lots of formats from a local USB drive, the Co-Star device will handle just about all of them. (It does not support ISO or xVID)

What additional content services are coming to the box? Will it have Vudu and Blockbuster On Demand in the future?
Vizio told me that more content services will be added to the box before the end of the year, but aren’t hinting at what those services will be. I really can’t speculate, but I doubt it would be Blockbuster On Demand. I’m also hearing that more content services will soon be coming to the Google TV platform, so it may be that more content for the box comes from Google rather than Vizio.

Did you test the streaming services via WiFi or ethernet? How well did WiFi work?
All of my testing was done via WiFi. The WiFi signal and reception was excellent, even when I moved the box to a TV located on the opposite side of my house from where my router was. I’ve had some reception problems with the WiFi on Roku’s in the past, and the Co-Star seems to have stronger WiFi reception than the Roku. BUT, many factors go into how well WiFi works on any device, including the unique setup in your home. So what worked best for me is not guaranteed to work best for you.

How well does the chrome browser handle flash content?
Using the Chrome browser via the Google TV platform, worked very well. I didn’t have any trouble playing Flash content and it didn’t stutter or have any hiccups.

I’m curious how the Vizio Co-Star stacks up to the Sony Blu-ray Google TV player?
The Google TV platform is the same on both boxes, but Vizio has re-skinned the Google TV platform for their box, making it easier to overlay live TV. But it is really hard to compare the two boxes as the Sony model is a Blu-ray player firs and the Vizio Co-Star isn’t. The Sony Blu-ray player is also 2x as expensive as the Co-Star.

Can’t I get android apps of Hulu Plus and MLB.TV via the Google Play store?
No. Hulu and MLB, along with others, are blocking access to their website if you’re using the Google TV setup. There are no apps in the Google Play store for MLB.TV, Hulu Plus and others for the Google TV platform.

As for Hulu Plus and the other apps, couldn’t you use something like PlayOn as a substitute and still pull them in?
I haven’t tested it, but you should be able to. PlayOn works on the Google TV platform by entering g.playon.tv into the search bar, which will bring you to the page that discovers your PlayOn PC. While you need a keyboard to control Google TV, Vizio’s Co-Star remote should be fine for this purpose since it has the trackpad and keyboard.

I’m wondering if this is an open API leaving the door open for a third-party app to use my iPhone or tablet as a replacement remote?
Vizio hasn’t given me a clear answer on what their API and SDK plans are for the Co-Star, so I don’t know what their long-term strategy is for this.

Since this has the Google TV platform on it, can you hook up a webcam and do video chat like you could with the Logitech box?
Presently there are not any apps available for Co-Star that support video chat, but as those become available webcams could be supported.

The term “value add services” is used a lot by content delivery networks to describe services that don’t fall under the typical commodity CDN business. It’s hard to define exactly what those services are as most CDN vendors don’t define it down to a product level. I get many questions asking what services are classified as value add, but the answer all depends on who you ask. The way I define it for people is that CDN services typically include four kinds of content delivery. Those are – audio/video streaming, audio/video downloads, software downloads and small object delivery.

Services outside of those would be considered value add and would include things like, application acceleration, dynamic site acceleration, front-end optimization, mobile content acceleration, media management (transcoding, ad insertion, content protection) and a host of other services for the purpose of security and commerce. That said, many of those value add services also utilize the CDN’s network to deliver this content, so not everything that falls under CDN can be that easily quantified as value add versus non-value add.

Each CDN vendor looks at and defines their services differently and many confuse the industry even more when they break out their revenue under the generic term of “value add services”, but then don’t define what those services are. Akamai in particular confuses the market because they break out part of their revenue based on services (products), while the other half is broken out by media and entertainment, which is not a product or service, but rather a vertical. All of this aside, here are what I consider to be the most common services that would fall under the term “value add services”, the way I define it, and definitions on what those services are.

• Dynamic Site Acceleration (DSA): Dynamic site acceleration is a suite of technologies and products that deals with optimizing dynamically served content across the network. Traditional DSA services often include TCP optimization, route optimization, connection management, on-the-fly compression, SSL offload and pre-fetching technologies.

• Front-End Optimization (FEO): Front-end optimization technologies help to reduce the number of page resources required to download a given page and makes the browser process the page faster. FEO technology isn’t used to bring content closer, but rather makes the content itself faster by optimizing the client side delivery of website resources.

• Transparent Caching: Transparent caching platforms make intelligent decisions about which content can and should be cached inside a carrier’s network. By deploying intelligent caches strategically throughout their networks, operators can cache and deliver popular content close to subscribers and reduce the amount of transit traffic across their networks.

• Licensed/Managed CDN: Licensed and managed CDN refers to software and services aimed at helping telcos, carriers and service providers build and deploy their own CDN services inside their network. Licensed CDN refers to the licensing of CDN software to the carrier who then builds a CDN solution on their own. Managed CDN is when a service based content delivery vendor helps build and manage the CDN component of the carrier’s network for them.

• Application Acceleration: Application acceleration is a suite of technologies that combines fast packet processing with SSL acceleration, connection multiplexing, dynamic caching and adaptive compression to improve application response times. These technologies enable enterprise customers to accelerate the delivery of internal, external and latency sensitive applications to distributed users across the Internet or via their enterprise network.

• Mobile Content Acceleration: Mobile content acceleration technologies are designed to specifically eliminate latencies found on mobile broadband networks to reduce page load times on mobile devices.

In addition to these listed, you also have a whole host of different services to handle things like DoS attacks (security), custom and managed DNS, custom reporting, tracking and analytics (especially for ad delivery) and lots of pieces in the video ecosystem for managing and adding business rules around the monetization of video. This is how I would classify value add services, but others may define it differently. How you would define it?

I’ve just posted a review of Vizio’s new $99 Co-Star streaming media box and as part of the review, I’m giving away one brand new unit to a lucky reader of my blog.

To enter the drawing, all you have to do is leave one comment on this post and make sure you submit the comment with a valid email. The drawing is open to anyone with a mailing address in the U.S. and I will select the winner at random in September. Good luck! The drawing is now over. Congrats to Andy S. who won the item.

And if you like free stuff, I’m also giving away two Google Nexus 7 Tablets.

The market for streaming boxes just got a little more crowded with the release of Vizio’s new $99 streaming media device, named the Co-Star. Joining the ranks of Roku, Apple, Western Digital, Sony and Netgear who already have $99 boxes in the market, Vizio’s Co-Star device is being delivered this week, to those who pre-ordered from Vizio.com. I’ve been testing the box for the past two days, and overall, the box performs pretty well. [Updated: See part two of my Vizio Co-Star review, where I answered some of your questions.]

Vizio said they sold out of the original run of boxes made just for the pre-order, but won’t say what quantity that was. The box will soon be up for general availability, but in the mean time, I’m giving one away for free. (See the link at the bottom of this post to enter.)

Starting off with the basics, the Co-Star has built-in ethernet, WiFi, two HDMI ports (in and out), DLNA support, one IR port and has USB to support the playback of local content. The Co-Star supports 1080p streaming and is about the size of two Apple TV units stacked on top of one another. The box supports content offerings from Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video, HBO GO, Wall Street Journal, Pandora, iHeartRadio and Slacker Radio. M-GO video-on-demand is advertised as being available, but hasn’t yet launched. While Vizio originally said the box would support Hulu Plus when they announced the Co-Star, the box does not currently have Hulu Plus support. Vizio says more content services will be added to the box before the end of the year, but aren’t hinting at what those services will be.

While this would be just another $99 box on the market if the specs stopped there, unique to the Co-Star is that it comes bundled with the Google TV platform, which Vizio has completely re-skinned for their device. In addition, no other $99 box on the market has HDMI pass through, thereby allowing you to overlay the Google TV platform and apps on top of live TV, thanks to the Co-Star’s HDMI in port. This is one of the nicest features of the device, as the user experience switching between live TV, Google TV and apps is seamless, but is still hampered by the fact that the Google TV platform still feels like a beta product.

Included with the box is a bluetooth touchpad universal remote with QWERTY keyboard. For comparison purposes, I included a photo of the remote next to a Blackberry and the Apple TV remote. The keyboard works quite well and the touchpad is easy to navigate, but the downside of all this functionality is that the remote is big, heavy and really thick. The buttons are very small, especially the numbers and all buttons require a hard press. There is no chance of you using the remote in low-light conditions since the remote is not backlit, so it really requires you to have to look at it each time you want to use it, especially if you want to change channels via the numeric keypad. While Vizio intends for users to adopt their remote for controlling their Co-Star, DVR, TV and sound system, any real power user isn’t going to use their remote for all their devices. Unlike many streaming media boxes, the Co-Star remote does have a power button to turn the device on/off, but has no LED light in the front of the box indicating on/off status. Clearly you know will know when it is off since it does pass through of your cable signal, but if it has on/off capabilities, I’d personally still like to see some indicator of this on the front of the unit.

Setting up the Co-Star is pretty easy, but it’s no Roku. That said, it’s a bit unfair to compare the two as the Roku has no HDMI in and doesn’t overlay live TV. So naturally, setup with any device that has more functionality, like the Co-Star, is going to take more time. The initial setup isn’t difficult, but will take 15-20 minutes to pair the bluetooth remote, connect the box to the Internet, enter your Google account info, select your TV model, select your DVR or STB model, select your cable provider and do a software update. I’ve already been pushed one software update and Vizio says another one is coming out this week. For anyone like me who got one of the first boxes during pre-order, your setup will be a bit more complex, as there were some issues that the update fixed. But any boxes going forward will have the latest software and will be easier to set up. While I did have some issues during setup, I chalk that up to getting one of the first boxes made and Vizio already knew about the problems and released the software patch. The patch coming out later this week will fix the problems with the 5.1 surround sound, so it’s great to see how responsive Vizio is being to fixing software issues.

I tested the Co-Star hooked up to a TiVo Series 3 unit with cable cards as well as a regular set-top-box from Verizon and saw quite a difference in performance between the two. The Co-Star had some major issues with the TiVo as many of the TiVo commands aren’t on the Co-Star remote and changing channels really lagged. If you have a TiVo, the Co-Star is probably not the box for you. On a regular set-top-box, the Co-Star performed much faster, didn’t have the lag and was pretty responsive, outside of the Netflix app. Most apps on the Co-Star load within a few seconds, but Netflix takes nearly 20 seconds to load.

I didn’t test playback of local content via a USB drive, but Vizio says the box supports H.264 (MP4, MKV, MOV, AVCHD, 3GP, TS), MPEG-4 part 2 (MP4, DIVX, AVI, 3GP, TS), WMV9 (ASF, AVI), MPEG-2 (MPG, TS), H.263 (MP4, 3GP, FLV). I’ll have to put USB playback to the test when I have time, but based purely on format/codec support, this box gives the Western Digital WD TV Live box some competition, for those users who have a local library of digital content they want to play through the device.

While the Co-Star has a lot of features, it’s really hard to call it the box to beat, or declare any box the winner, as consumers have different needs. The Co-Star won’t work with any TV that doesn’t have HDMI, so it won’t be a fit for everyone. No other $99 box has Google TV built-in though, so the Co-Star wins in that category, as well as the HDMI pass through. There really isn’t much to complain about on the hardware front with the Co-Star, but it still lacks support for Hulu Plus, EPIX, Vudu, MLB.TV, NHL and NBA. So Vizio still has some work to do to catch up to the content choices available on the Roku.

Overall, Vizio’s Co-Star device will please most consumers and Vizio’s made a really nice device, considering this is their first entry into the $99 streaming box market. If they can add content services from Hulu and MLB in particular, along with a few others, then this box will have more functionality than a Roku, at the same price.

Updated: I did not have the time to test the OnLive gaming service on the box, so I don’t know how well that performs.

I have two Vizio Co-Star boxes, so I’m giving one away on my blog. Click here to enter the drawing.