Just as the most important Internet service providers around the world are gearing up to fight piracy, a privately held company in Boston announced the Myka Box: a hardware device that relies on the BitTorrent protocol to bring high-definition movies on your living-room plasma screen.

Shortly put, Myka is a media hub that brings all the features found in Apple's TV into a less restricted environment. The device looks like the Apple TV, and even relies on the same operation principle, but unlike the former, it does not depend on a pay-per-download server. Instead, it uses the BitTorrent protocol to locate and download high-definition movies, then stream the files to the HD display.

Since the device uses a peer sharing format, it does not need to connect to a single server. According to its manufacturers, the media hub allows the user to download miscellaneous types of content, beyond the typical music and videos.

Users can hook up the Myka media box using either wireless or wired connections. The device comes with a plethora of video outputs, including HDMI, composite, S-Video and SPDIF ports for the TV connection. The HDMI connector fully supports HD video output up to 1080i while the RCA and S-video connectors are used for analog sources.

The hub can play video formats such as DivX, H.264, MPEG-4, and WMV, as well as the "exotic" MPEG-2 and VC-1 formats, that are usually reserved for stand-alone movie discs.

The Myka media hub comes with a pre-installed Linux-based operating system, as well as with the Bit Torrent client. The device can also be networked with a PC, which allows users to transfer the movies, then burn them on DVD.

The company is currently taking pre-orders for the Myka media box, that is expected to arrive on the market in 80GB, 160GB, and 500GB flavors, with price tags of $299, $349 and $479, respectively.