What You Need to Know about the LG-Netflix Box

LG and Netflix have been doling out more details on their joint hardware project day by day. Here’s what we know about the BD300, with thanks to Wired Gadget Lab, The New York Times Bits Blog, and of course, the official press release.

• It’ll be available the first week of October at Best Buy, Circuit City and specialty retailers.
• It will cost $399.95 (the Roku Netflix player is $99.99).
• It will be a Blu-ray disc player with BD Live (though accessing the Internet will require an additional memory dongle).
• You’ll have to have a Netflix subscription, but LG will offer two weeks free Netflix service for new members with the player.
• It will play 12,000 Netflix movies and TV episodes, but you’ll have to queue them up in advance from your PC.
• Netflix content will not stream in HD, but rather “near DVD-quality,” depending on the speed of your Internet connection. Netflix hopes to stream movies in HD by next year.

The appeal of this particular device is in getting Blu-ray and streaming movies in the same place, even if the difference in quality is that much more apparent. But the Xbox 360 is also getting Netflix streaming, as well as a hefty price drop. Meanwhile, Amazon doesn’t have its own box, but it does have 40,000 titles and multiple hardware partnerships.