72
Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Media support I don't think there's really anything in the product category that beats the Boxee Box in format support. It plays pretty much everything.
- Video quality Phenomenal. vudu HDX videos look nearly like bluray, to be honest. It's just amazing, and again it probably beats everything in the STB category.
- Audio quality Sounds fantastic. It supports so many surround modes and lets you tell it which modes your equipment supports, so it can cater to the ones it doesn't.
- Ease of use Sadly, it's a little flaky, and the UI needs work. It's fine if everything goes right, but it something breaks the average consumer would be lost.
- Design and form factor Very pretty design. The box is a little lightweight but solidly made. The remote is too plasticy and I can't see its buttons in the dark.
Detailed review
For the most part, I really, really, really like my Boxee Box. I fall just short of loving it because of so many tiny quirks. There are moments where the Box just fails a little and tarnishes the experience.
But like I said, for the most part I really like it. I challenge anybody reading this to find ANY other device on the market that handles local content better than the Boxee Box. Well, that is, local content that isn't personal content, if you know what I mean. For things like TV Shows and Movies, it does an amazing job presenting them to you in an easy to browse way. The Box also handles more types of media than anything else out there. In this regard it blows the Apple TV out of the water (don't worry, Apple fanatics, it loses to it in many other ways).
My favorite thing about the Boxee Box is that I thought local media handling was going to be my favorite part about the device, but then other things pleasantly surprised me. When I first got the Box, I fell in love with "Watch it Later." This is a mechanism that involves a browser bookmarlet. When you see a video on Youtube and a handful of other video sites, you click on the Boxee bookmarklet and the video is saved to your Boxee queue. Then, the next time you have the Boxee Box running, you go to your Watch Later queue and you can watch the videos you've saved. I never realized how much I'd like this feature. I tend to use it for two specific purposes: 1) there's a video I want to watch on the big screen instead of my computer monitor, 2) there's a video I want to show my wife or friends.
The other revelation to me has been vudu. I've used Netflix before on my Tivo, and while Netflix on the Boxee Box is far better, it's still Netflix so nothing really surprised me here. vudu, on the other hand, has changed my life! Yes, it's expensive to spend $6 on a movie rental (to be fair, $3-6), but when my wife and I go to the movie theater it's $25 at least, and then there's annoying people in the theater. Paying $6 for a rental that looks extremely close to bluray quality is a treat in my view. vudu simply has better video AND audio quality than any other even remotely similar service. Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, etc have nothing on vudu.
The problem with Boxee is that it is designed to bring all the video of the web to the TV, but it doesn't really do a good job of that. In fact, mine is set up in a manner that pretty much pushes all of that to the background and instead highlights all my local files. The interface is still a little clunky, and the device needs to be a little more stable, but for the most part it's well done.
Lastly, I want to talk about the remote. The remote is one of the reasons I purchased the Boxee Box, because like many geeks I'm sick to death of typing with nothing more than a d-pad and a select button. That is torture. They force it on suspected terrorists instead of waterboarding. There are a few problems with the Boxee keyboard, though. First, it's IMPOSSIBLE to use the keyboard unless there's a light on. This is annoying if the lights are dimmed for watching a movie or something (I have automated house lights, so maybe this isn't an issue for everyone, but mine are dimmed for movies). I run into this issue often. The annoying thing is that the letters on the keypad are a dark gray on the black plastic of the remote, while the secondary characters like numbers and punctuation are a BRIGHT neon green. I think this would have helped visibility of the important buttons a little, as long as they weren't planning on putting a backlight in the remote. The keypress feel of the keyboard could be a lot better, but it's not the worst.
The remote's RF connection is very good in my experience, so I haven't had issues there. I've also heard people complain about the orientation of the remote. It's true that if the Boxee logo weren't on it, the front face of the remote would be completely reversible. However, I don't have much of a problem feeling for the raised Boxee logo and figuring out which direction the remote needs to go in. I've only held it the wrong way once. But I'm the type of person who also doesn't find a problem with my beloved Tivo remote, so that can give you some reference if you think that remote is easily held wrong.
Sorry for the long review. I have a lot of things to think about the Boxee Box, and I know I'm forgetting something in this review. Overall I REALLY like it, as I said in the first line. When it comes down to it, though, I only recommend the Boxee Box for geeks, and that's the scale I'm grading on. That's where my 4.5 goes. If we were talking about the average consumer, I'd probably give it a 3 or lower. For the average consumer I still follow this mantra: if they use iTunes, they need an AppleTV, if not, they need a Roku.
But I REALLY like my Boxee Box... :)
But like I said, for the most part I really like it. I challenge anybody reading this to find ANY other device on the market that handles local content better than the Boxee Box. Well, that is, local content that isn't personal content, if you know what I mean. For things like TV Shows and Movies, it does an amazing job presenting them to you in an easy to browse way. The Box also handles more types of media than anything else out there. In this regard it blows the Apple TV out of the water (don't worry, Apple fanatics, it loses to it in many other ways).
My favorite thing about the Boxee Box is that I thought local media handling was going to be my favorite part about the device, but then other things pleasantly surprised me. When I first got the Box, I fell in love with "Watch it Later." This is a mechanism that involves a browser bookmarlet. When you see a video on Youtube and a handful of other video sites, you click on the Boxee bookmarklet and the video is saved to your Boxee queue. Then, the next time you have the Boxee Box running, you go to your Watch Later queue and you can watch the videos you've saved. I never realized how much I'd like this feature. I tend to use it for two specific purposes: 1) there's a video I want to watch on the big screen instead of my computer monitor, 2) there's a video I want to show my wife or friends.
The other revelation to me has been vudu. I've used Netflix before on my Tivo, and while Netflix on the Boxee Box is far better, it's still Netflix so nothing really surprised me here. vudu, on the other hand, has changed my life! Yes, it's expensive to spend $6 on a movie rental (to be fair, $3-6), but when my wife and I go to the movie theater it's $25 at least, and then there's annoying people in the theater. Paying $6 for a rental that looks extremely close to bluray quality is a treat in my view. vudu simply has better video AND audio quality than any other even remotely similar service. Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, etc have nothing on vudu.
The problem with Boxee is that it is designed to bring all the video of the web to the TV, but it doesn't really do a good job of that. In fact, mine is set up in a manner that pretty much pushes all of that to the background and instead highlights all my local files. The interface is still a little clunky, and the device needs to be a little more stable, but for the most part it's well done.
Lastly, I want to talk about the remote. The remote is one of the reasons I purchased the Boxee Box, because like many geeks I'm sick to death of typing with nothing more than a d-pad and a select button. That is torture. They force it on suspected terrorists instead of waterboarding. There are a few problems with the Boxee keyboard, though. First, it's IMPOSSIBLE to use the keyboard unless there's a light on. This is annoying if the lights are dimmed for watching a movie or something (I have automated house lights, so maybe this isn't an issue for everyone, but mine are dimmed for movies). I run into this issue often. The annoying thing is that the letters on the keypad are a dark gray on the black plastic of the remote, while the secondary characters like numbers and punctuation are a BRIGHT neon green. I think this would have helped visibility of the important buttons a little, as long as they weren't planning on putting a backlight in the remote. The keypress feel of the keyboard could be a lot better, but it's not the worst.
The remote's RF connection is very good in my experience, so I haven't had issues there. I've also heard people complain about the orientation of the remote. It's true that if the Boxee logo weren't on it, the front face of the remote would be completely reversible. However, I don't have much of a problem feeling for the raised Boxee logo and figuring out which direction the remote needs to go in. I've only held it the wrong way once. But I'm the type of person who also doesn't find a problem with my beloved Tivo remote, so that can give you some reference if you think that remote is easily held wrong.
Sorry for the long review. I have a lot of things to think about the Boxee Box, and I know I'm forgetting something in this review. Overall I REALLY like it, as I said in the first line. When it comes down to it, though, I only recommend the Boxee Box for geeks, and that's the scale I'm grading on. That's where my 4.5 goes. If we were talking about the average consumer, I'd probably give it a 3 or lower. For the average consumer I still follow this mantra: if they use iTunes, they need an AppleTV, if not, they need a Roku.
But I REALLY like my Boxee Box... :)
good review!
3 people find this review helpful