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

Re:The article forgot to mention

[jwietelmann]

It supports not only Windows XP, but Vista and 7, but only 32-bit versions.

In contrast it supports Ubuntu 64-bit.

To clarify, you can absolutely run 32-bit Boxee on a 64-bit version of Windows, so it technically supports 64-bit Windows Vista and 7. They just don't provide a native 64-bit version of Boxee.

Re:DirectX on Linux?

[Tapewolf]

Abstraction layers.

Re:Great! Now I can watch

[MrEricSir]

Sup dawg, I heard you like 4chan so we put a Boxxy on your Boxee so you can troll while you troll.

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???

Re:What exactly is boxee good for???

[SlashdotOgre]

Previously the web site had a great intro video that actually explained it fairly well. I'm not quite sure when that was changed, but since I've been running the alpha for roughly a year now, I can try taking a stab at it.

Boxee's goal is to be a "social media player" where you can watch media from various sources, see what your friends are watching, and let your friends know what you're watching. By "media" it's referring to TV, movies, music, and pictures. The source of most of the content comes from the Internet (although it definitely supports offline and local network content). Boxee provides a framework to create native applications that allow aggregating and viewing of the online media (basically XBMC plugins if you're familiar with that app), for example there's apps for Hulu, Pandora, Flickr, etc. Boxee automatically monitors what you and your friends watch, and allows you to browse the history of it as well. Boxee also offers other cool features like grabbing metadata for local content. E.g. if it detects a ripped copy of Season 1 of The Office, it will grab screen shots and descriptions of each episode from IMDB.

Personally I've found Boxee's primary benefit is for aggregating media. With the new version, I can search a TV show title and it comes up with all the episodes I can stream regardless of the source (e.g. episodes from Hulu, nbc.com, etc.). I'm not a big fan of the social aspect, but it's not a deal breaker (I just ignore it). So far I've been very impressed with both the alpha and beta releases and would definitely recommend giving the software a go.

Re:DirectX on Linux?

[Nadaka]

Neither do I, how is going from OpenGL to DirectX an "upgrade" either?

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.

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.