Boxee Opens Beta To All

DeviceGuru writes "Boxee has quietly moved its long-awaited Beta release onto its public download site, reports OpenBoxeeBox.com. The new version of this free Internet- and local- A/V streaming player currently supports PCs running Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Ubuntu OSes, with an Apple TV version coming soon. Key enhancements include a vastly redesigned homescreen and new global menu, which collectively make it much quicker to locate content, an improved search function that now treats online and local media equivalently, so you can locate and play movie or TV show titles much faster, plus — at long last — a fully functional Netflix instant-downloads player appears in the Windows version (but not in the Linux version). Also of significance is that Boxee's graphical engine has migrated from from OpenGL to DirectX, allowing it to take advantage of Direct X video acceleration. The free public Boxee Beta A/V player software is available on Boxee's website."

Comments

Damn it.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the fuck will either Netflix move away from Silverlight or Moonlight support the Netflix player? This is currently my single biggest gripe on Linux by far.

Re:Damn it.

[Sir_Lewk]

visual studio

All OS, text editor, and compiler zealotry aside... WTF???

If you are doing Windows development, you should be doing it in Windows. Expecting Linux to work for you if the tasks you need to preform are distinctly Windows related is just nuts. Use the right tool for the job.

Re:Damn it.

[c6gunner]

No, people disagreeing with you is not a troll. At worst they're just wrong. In this case, though, he's absolutely right. I also gave up on linux recently, largely due to issues similar to his. I really wanted to use it as my full-time OS, and I went for about 2 months without booting into windows even once. In the long run, though, the numerous small deficiencies (combined with a X-server memory leak that nobody seemed to know how to fix) were just too much to put up with. Windows 7 works out of the box, and doesn't go out of it's way to frustrate me on a regular basis. I can't say the same for any flavor of Linux. They have their uses, but as a full time desktop OS they've still got some work to do.

Re:Damn it.

[Tikkun]

There are lots of really awesome things about Linux. Running proprietary software and supporting DRM infested platforms are not among them.

GNU/Ubuntu

[McGiraf]

"Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Ubuntu OSes"

Not Linux? :)

So now Ubuntu is to Linux what Kleenex is to tissue?

GNU/Ubuntu sounds weird though.

What exactly is boxee good for???

[BurkeTheEldar]

I have zilch experience with boxee but did spend some time on it's site a couple of weeks ago to see if it might be of utility when viewing tv shows or movies online. For the life of me I could not figure out what its supposed to do 'for me'. The boxee website is a great example of what happens when they people involved are so deeply entrenched in whatever realm boxee is that they have no clue how to communicate to 'regular' people.

A site like hulu is easy to figure out. But it's got too many commercials and they seem to be adding more all the time. Boxee...someone tell me what it's good for? Like you were explaining to someone who didn't know already???

I've gone back to XBMC.

[Jason Pollock]

I've been a faithful user of Boxee for the past year, but the Beta convinced me to go back to XBMC.

Problems I had with Boxee:
1) Didn't expose all features of XBMC, such as Synch Display Refresh Rate to Media. I've got a TV that can do 24hz, 50hz,60hz, etc, why should I see pull down artifacts? I also wanted the Skip Direct to Menu option for DVD playback.
2) Boxee hasn't fixed problems from the Alpha - I've got some ISO rips which still fail to playback in Boxee. XBMC and VLC have no problems with them. This was a _huge_ WAF issue. She had gone back to pulling the DVDs out of storage to watch them!
3) The Social Media aspect was pointless. None of my friends were using Boxee, and aren't likely to. It was pure clutter between me and my media. Note: You can't unsubscribe from Avner's feed!
4) Not being able to watch videos, or listen to music until it had finished scanning my collection. I have 4TB of media, don't make me wait.
5) When I upgraded to the Beta, my remote control stopped working. :) The packages overwrote files that I had changed to get everything working.
6) Their releases are a long time apart.
7) Even when I submitted a patch for a bug, it didn't make it into the Beta.

The only thing I seem to be giving up is Hulu support, which if it really annoys me, I can port back into XBMC.

I wish them luck, the Boxee box announced at CES looks pretty cool, and the $200 price point is pretty compelling. It's just not for me.

Nothing to do with OpenGL

[pavon]

The reporting on this has been extremely bad. This all has to doing video decoding in hardware. DirectX has APIs for that, and they are now being used in the Windows version. The Linux version continues to use the relevant Xorg extensions (XvMC?) for video decoding.