Build a BoxeeBox and Wean Yourself From Cable

Since I've been having serious problems with satellite all week, DeviceGuru's submission was really interesting to me. He says "Inspired by Roku's awesome Netflix video download box and impressed with Boxee's free A/V media center platform, it was merely a matter of time before DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum would create the BoxeeBox, an Ubuntu-powered HTPC with Boxee serving as its primary media center UI. Based on a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, the BoxeeBox has the look and feel of consumer A/V equipment and packs 2GB RAM, 1TB HDD, CD/DVD drive, USB, Firewire, HDMI, DVI-D, RGB, and 8-channel surround sound audio."

Comments

Sub $500?

[Thelasko]

That's nice and all, but how about something sub $300. If one of these can be built sub $200 (including the tuner), I would buy it today.

Re:Sub $500?

[QuantumRiff]

I couldn't agree more. A $500 box would free me from cable, at the price of about 18 months worth of cable. That's not a very good ROI. $300 would at least break me free in a year or so. (I don't have digital cable, if I did, it would probably be much quicker) Also, why do you never see these set top boxes with the over the air tuners? I would love one that acted as my digital TV tuner too

Re:Sub $500?

[Striikerr]

Why? The point of Roku is that you can get netflix content. The BoxeeBox is not going to do that.

Umm, yes the Boxee Box WILL get NetFlix streaming content. It can connect into your NetFlix account and it displays all of the Streamable content presently in your queue. It will also let you browse other streamable content. I have used Boxee to access my NetFlix streamable content on my Mac connected to my TV. It is an amazing application!

Re:Sub $500?

[ShieldW0lf]

I've got an old Athlon with Mythbuntu and XBMC sitting in the living room streaming content off my home network, and I'm quite content not having cable. People who visit that do have cable with all the trimmings want to know how they can buy what I've got because it's better than what they have at home.

I could use another terabyte drive on the thing though...

Why isn't the free distribution of cultural content considered part of a countries diplomatic budget? It should be...

Re:Sub $500?

[Lumpy]

XBMC Live - Better than Boxee and uses far less Horsepower for 720p HDTV.

I built one for $190.00 with a P4-3ghz proc and motherboard, all the goodies including a 8600gt video card and MCE remote. expense was the hard drive to hold all the 5Gig AVI HDTV movie rips. I use a python script with command line bittorrent and wget to silently pull all podcasts and tv shows I am after to the box. works great and I dont have to have a tuner card. Add an additional $99.00 of you want it to look like a stereo piece, or buy a old replay TV for $20.00 and hammer everything inside that case.

popcornhour rules

[grub]

If you don't want DIY and something non-geek friendly for ~$200 check out the popcornhour network media tanks. Streams from a server or user-installed hard disk. Plays x264, divx, xvid, wmv, etc all at up to 1080p.

We own two and just love them.

Re:This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota

[modf]

It's back up for me, but here is a cached version just in case:

http://74.125.47.132/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.deviceguru.com%2Fthe-boxeebox-cookbook%2F

Since we can't RTFA, I don't get it

[Overzeetop]

TFS makes it sound like you can replace your cable (or satellite) provider with this box. Where is the (non-OTA) broadcast content coming from. Has he made a wife-capable Hulu scraper? If so, and Hulu agrees not to break the box every couple of months, then I'm interested. If it's just "you can download stuff that's a year old and on DVD from netflix, do OTA, and access your personal media collection," then it's really not much better than what already exists.

Unless it's that he's put it into a nice looking box. In which case...he's just discovered the world of HTPC cases.

I'd love to believe, but without an article I'm puzzled at where the novelty is.

Re:This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota

[CopaceticOpus]

Sides good trolls know how to time things JUST right.

Skipping unnecessary characters such as "b", "e", and "," can make all the difference!