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Boxee Box Matures; Another Look At the Platform
MojoKid writes "Though D-Link actually started shipping the Boxee Box media player back in Q4 of last year, it was obvious that it needed a bit more polish to offer a reasonably satisfying experience. Since that time, Boxee has released a number of firmware and platform updates that enhance the device and bring new services, like full 1080p movie content from Vudu and what could be considered critical mass in mainstream movie rentals, Netflix. The Boxee Box has had time to mature and this full walk-through of the system shows it's actually an interesting alternative to competitive products in this class of device, like Apple TV, Google TV and Roku. There's still lots of work to be done in fleshing out services and content but the Boxee platform has a bit more polish behind it now."
I just want a good wireless router with a built in hardware RAID 5 array.
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I'd recommend looking into the buffalo product line. They cater to that area a lot. I would buy a boxee, but I can't see a reason to. Most ITX platforms have a fairly good upgrade path, especially since some of them include quad core options with PCI-E. Throw in your media center software of choice and you don't have to deal with different online services blocking you because they don't like branded device X.
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in boxee is when the hardware came out there has been virtualy no binary releases of their software for those who like to use their software on their own hardware. Sources are up for graps but so they are not doing anything wrong licensing wise but the debian packing and building is a big pile of steaming spagetti..
Where is the slownewsday tag?
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I was waiting for that comment...
I read the Boxee Box does do Netflix with 5.1 AC3 sound, which the Roku does not do yet. I like the Roku and use it several hours every day and really like it, but would like it better if it did 5.1 sound with Netflix - it's odd becasue the Roku does do 5.1 sound with the free Amazon streaming for Prime members, Maybe a Boxee Box is in my near future, as I read it is better than our Asus O'Play Air, bu tthe $200.00 price tag slows me down.
It would be great if I could replace a box in the TV cabinet instead of adding yet another one.
This is presumed to be a PS3 exclusive for the time being, because as you mentioned... the "premier" Netflix streamer (Roku) can't do it yet either. All the boxes physically support it, it's just Netflix lagging behind.
You can periodically grab these new for $150 or less, and there have been several big deals in the past few weeks for $130. Don't pay $200.
I got a Boxee for Christmas and we've been loving it. I haven't used a Roku or Apple TV, but the Boxee is great. We use it primarily as a media station to watch media on my PC on the TV. It's fast, the quality is wonderful, and we don't have hardly any technical problems with it. I did need to browse a few forums after a firmware update made it unable to see the shared folders on my PC. Other than that, it's great for watching Daily Show and other things whenever we feel like it. The remote control keyboard is great too. The interface could use some work. I find it difficult to mark "Favorites" and then get to them easily again.
Let's not forget the Iomega TV with Boxee coming up.
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Bez wojny nie ma pokoju.
I fee this is a good combo. Been running it for over a week, with plugins can stream network channels, HULU (Plus and regular) and the ATV netflix is better than the roku one. For $99 I think it is a steal. I regretted purchasing the Roku about 15 minutes after hooking it up, not the same with ATV2 w/XBMC.
The Boxee streaming 1080p is a little deal, but most TVs when you are viewing over 8-9 feet it doesn't matter. I looked at the boxee, but the lack of content swayed me away.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
I bought mine specifically to free up my laptop and watch Baseball on the TV, but the rest of the content is pretty good. Their Apps section helped me find content that I never knew existed. My daughter likes earth touch. We tried the free trials of the commercial movie streaming services but won't be paying a monthly subscription. It simply doesn't fit our usage pattern. Our DVR has more newly recorded content than we have time to watch. It also plays our home movies from our file server very nicely.
The biggest drawback for my use case is their music player. Luckilly the underlying player (VLC I think) supports .m3u files, so I just wrote a script to generate .m3u files based on artist, genre, and other criteria found in our music file headers. So, we just point it at the .m3u files and play music over our stereo.
So, the Boxee Box is either great or sucks depending on what you want it for. With a little scripting know how, it became great for me and my family. And, the remote is awsome!
I can do all of this on my Tivo, and I don't even have the TivoHD.
Not being able to download movies from Amazon seems like a huge gap compared to the Roku Streaming Players.
...despite being the sort of geek who really doesn't care what a computing device looks like, I will never buy one of these things until they put it in a proper boring rectangular case that I can stack somewhere neatly.
Insecure people who need the approval of their peers or the constant desire to impress others can buy Apple, but personally I don't need a set-top box to be a conversation point at dinner parties - I need it to be able to fit in as small a place as possible with all my other gear.
It's a shame because otherwise it's a reasonable specification that's fairly open & at a good price...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The HotHardware article touts the social media aspect and the ability to share, but honestly, out of the dozen or so friends/coworkers I know that use the service (no one I know has the Box), not a single one even bothers with those features. Is my circle just off-base, or is it really as pointless as I suspect?
The one thing I would like to see in any of these boxes (Boxee, XBMC, etc.) is a clean integrated DVR. With CableCard support. Why do I have to use the cableco's box, or pay for a Tivo, or build my own separate media center (myth or Win7 or whatever) to get a DVR? I don't want to have to manage some sort of convoluted ecosystem of boxes or extenders either. Boxee/XBC obviously has the media management, playback, and streaming down pat. Why isn't there a DVR option that I can plug into networked storage and do all of that natively, too?
I looked quite seriously at Boxee at Christmastime. I wanted to stream movies to a tv set from the computer. I bought an LG BD570 (which accepts both wired and wireless b/g/n internet) for $80 (it only came with a 2 year manufacturers warranty because it had been factory-refurbished). I updated the firmware and its been working great. The boxee does basically the same, for $200. I've never seen that unit anywhere else for that little, and the store ran out of stock in less than 2 days (and they had more than 60 units). The boxee looked might tempting though, since its very competitive on price, and offers a few more file formats. I run linux with tiny dlna to stream movies from the computer to the unit (also the PS3). TinyDLNA connects to all of these perfectly.
I'm very tempted to get an Iomega Boxee if it comes out in the next couple of months. Netflix is working on Boxee Box now, so that's a big barrier removed. Having built-in storage so I can use the Iomega Boxee as a NAS device is a big plus. I'd really like if there was some way to have it act a DVR (in my case, for over-the-air TV)... I still can't have everything I want in a single device, but getting closer.
Of course, being in Canada, the next barrier is the Bell/Rogers/CRTC duopoly threat currently attacking Internet usage to protect their other entertainment products. And wrangling U.S. Netflix to work in Canada is a wee bit of a pain, but doable. Netflix Canada has a helluva lot of catching up to do.
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What! A now product comes on the market now, and it still doesn't do IPv6?
I used to record stuff from my hauppage card, remaster to MPEG-PS and then burn to R/W DVD. With my Boxee I just leave the recorded shows on a Samba share and stream them to the boxee over wifi.
All of my mp3's play on the boxee as well and the boxee has this little dancing-gfx-bar thingy on the music player application to give you something to watch while the music is playing.
The remote is cool with the keyboard on the back, but not something you'd want to surf around with all day. It does make keying-in passwords and accounts much easier (for pandora, netflix, etc). It's really nice to be able to pause/rw/ff my streaming content from the network too.
The way boxee aggregates all the internet content is really nice too and now having Netflix streaming available is pretty awesome. It was the best $200 bucks I've spent.
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I've done well with the Asus O!Play media server. I upgraded to the latest firmware and it does a fine job of playing back a ton of different formats. I have it connected to a networked 2 terabyte hard drive and it's pretty awesome.