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Do you have the Boxee Box yet?
What do you think? Post your impressions! (We just got one in the office today, though I haven't had a chance to play with it yet).
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Very disappointed. Nothing plays with Hulu removed. No Fancast or Major Networks. Most of my content that I "favorited" before doesn't work (Office, Chuck, The Middle). I wanted to watch stuff that wasn't on Hulu Plus and it doesn't appear to work. I am glad Amazon has a return policy.
This really isn't a fault of Boxee but rather Hulu and their licensing agreements. I'm a Hulu+ subscriber and have been deeply frustrated lately by the content that isn't available and how it's fragmented.
For example: many shows you can watch via the browser on your computer but aren't available to watch on mobile devices.
For example: many shows you can watch via the browser on your computer but aren't available to watch on mobile devices.
Just a quick first impression... I got mine yesterday and Boxee hadn't released the latest software version until this morning. Now I've had a full day with the older software and what I'm assuming is 1.0. I love the new streamlined minimalist interface. It took me an hour yesterday to figure why the Boxee couldn't see my shared drives on a Windows 7 PC (hint: uninstalling Windows Live Essentials fixed SMB shares, the sign-in assistant screws with it somehow).
Apps: The VEVO app is very cool, as is TED. Plays good quality videos. The Boxee Browser works, although moving the cursor is slow.
Keep in mind that 99% of my usage will be playing local media through the network.
Movies: Playing 720p and 1080p content from a shared network drive works as you'd expect. I love that you can look at the recently added files in addition to A-Z.
TV Shows: If you favorite a TV show, you can pull it up quickly through the Favorites submenu under TV Shows.
There's too much to go through, but for $200 I am loving it and will probably no longer use the WDTV Live nor the Popcorn Hour that I have.
Apps: The VEVO app is very cool, as is TED. Plays good quality videos. The Boxee Browser works, although moving the cursor is slow.
Keep in mind that 99% of my usage will be playing local media through the network.
Movies: Playing 720p and 1080p content from a shared network drive works as you'd expect. I love that you can look at the recently added files in addition to A-Z.
TV Shows: If you favorite a TV show, you can pull it up quickly through the Favorites submenu under TV Shows.
There's too much to go through, but for $200 I am loving it and will probably no longer use the WDTV Live nor the Popcorn Hour that I have.
Oh yeah, and the remote is awesome. I just want to keep picking it up and play with it even if I don't want to watch anything.
I spent about six months dealing with a 2010 Mac mini directly connected to a DroboPro with almost 10Tb of media through both Plex and Boxee. It devolved into a nightmare.
Originally everything worked great. I had evaluated the Alpha of Boxee, but its scanning and matching routines were truly FUBARed (True Blood turned up as Blues Clues; not joking). I migrated to Plex 0.8, and ran that through this summer until Plex 0.9 came out. Things once more became FUBARed with the new Server-Client model (a full software rewrite for the Plex team), the Plex Media Server randomly crapping out in the middle of a movie, etc. Since the Mac mini was in the living room I didn't normally have a keyboard nearby, thinking VNC and an Apple Remote would handle it day-in day-out. And for some reason both Plex and Boxee had tons of trouble streaming 1080p content over our home gigabit network, thus the DroboPro directly connected via FireWire. Perhaps it was more of a Mac mini problem...? Crikey, and sometimes the Plex Media Server would randomly peg CPU usage at 100% during a movie and continue playing audio but stop video. And then crash after quitting, only to be solved by a restart (and sometimes it would prevent VNC or LogMeIn from responding).
Regardless, I recently saw the Boxee Box finally announce its November release. Amazon order placed in short order. I wanted to stop having to deal with a full-on computer in the living room, and to move the noisy Drobo somewhere else.
We received our Boxee Box today. Immediately hooked it up (really dig the design of the hardware, and the glowing green Boxee logo). I took a couple of minutes to move our DroboPro to a Mac Pro server elsewhere in the house, and setup SMB sharing for the logical volumes. Told Boxee how to access those SMB shares, and it started indexing things.
The new software feels so much faster than the version I was using on the Mac mini, which I find very strange (Mac mini = Core 2 Duo; Boxee Box = Atom). I jumped around tonight into a new Lord of the Rings Blu-ray rip, Star Trek (2009), Children of Men, and Avatar. Everything runs fine over our home network now, for whatever damn reason (network utilization off the Mac Pro has yet to exceed 4MB/s during playback, so I really have NO idea as to why the Mac mini implementation kept choking).
Our media collection touches every different kind of codec and container you can find on Usenet or your local BitTorrent site: so far Boxee has played everything I've thrown at it tonight. Without stuttering or displaying strange execution messages or having the video and audio seconds apart.
As a side note am I the only person who had previously experienced the downloadable Boxee install sometimes start a video, you can hear the audio properly, but stay on the video selection screen and be unable to select the Now Playing tab at the top right? Happened to me as recently as this week... multiple times... in one session.
I really, really, really like the Boxee remote. Unlike the Google TV or other Roku-like options, this remote is a good size and has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back. I am so happy that I can quickly punch out a movie title rather than scrolling and pecking. The remote is also RF, so the Boxee Box can stay out of line-of-sight. I refuse to stock my living room with a full-size lap keyboard for selfish aesthetic reasons; my previous experiences obviously showing how impractical that might be.
All in all I am very happy to have a quiet living room back with a computer I do not have to VNC into to apply a damn security or iTunes update which randomly pops up and sits in front of a playing video. =)
My single complaint so far: this Boxee software version still does not have a default setting I can change for disabling subtitles. Somewhat annoying that I have to turn off subtitles on a per video basis, but luckily I would guess less than 40% of our videos have subtitle tracks packaged.
Originally everything worked great. I had evaluated the Alpha of Boxee, but its scanning and matching routines were truly FUBARed (True Blood turned up as Blues Clues; not joking). I migrated to Plex 0.8, and ran that through this summer until Plex 0.9 came out. Things once more became FUBARed with the new Server-Client model (a full software rewrite for the Plex team), the Plex Media Server randomly crapping out in the middle of a movie, etc. Since the Mac mini was in the living room I didn't normally have a keyboard nearby, thinking VNC and an Apple Remote would handle it day-in day-out. And for some reason both Plex and Boxee had tons of trouble streaming 1080p content over our home gigabit network, thus the DroboPro directly connected via FireWire. Perhaps it was more of a Mac mini problem...? Crikey, and sometimes the Plex Media Server would randomly peg CPU usage at 100% during a movie and continue playing audio but stop video. And then crash after quitting, only to be solved by a restart (and sometimes it would prevent VNC or LogMeIn from responding).
Regardless, I recently saw the Boxee Box finally announce its November release. Amazon order placed in short order. I wanted to stop having to deal with a full-on computer in the living room, and to move the noisy Drobo somewhere else.
We received our Boxee Box today. Immediately hooked it up (really dig the design of the hardware, and the glowing green Boxee logo). I took a couple of minutes to move our DroboPro to a Mac Pro server elsewhere in the house, and setup SMB sharing for the logical volumes. Told Boxee how to access those SMB shares, and it started indexing things.
The new software feels so much faster than the version I was using on the Mac mini, which I find very strange (Mac mini = Core 2 Duo; Boxee Box = Atom). I jumped around tonight into a new Lord of the Rings Blu-ray rip, Star Trek (2009), Children of Men, and Avatar. Everything runs fine over our home network now, for whatever damn reason (network utilization off the Mac Pro has yet to exceed 4MB/s during playback, so I really have NO idea as to why the Mac mini implementation kept choking).
Our media collection touches every different kind of codec and container you can find on Usenet or your local BitTorrent site: so far Boxee has played everything I've thrown at it tonight. Without stuttering or displaying strange execution messages or having the video and audio seconds apart.
As a side note am I the only person who had previously experienced the downloadable Boxee install sometimes start a video, you can hear the audio properly, but stay on the video selection screen and be unable to select the Now Playing tab at the top right? Happened to me as recently as this week... multiple times... in one session.
I really, really, really like the Boxee remote. Unlike the Google TV or other Roku-like options, this remote is a good size and has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back. I am so happy that I can quickly punch out a movie title rather than scrolling and pecking. The remote is also RF, so the Boxee Box can stay out of line-of-sight. I refuse to stock my living room with a full-size lap keyboard for selfish aesthetic reasons; my previous experiences obviously showing how impractical that might be.
All in all I am very happy to have a quiet living room back with a computer I do not have to VNC into to apply a damn security or iTunes update which randomly pops up and sits in front of a playing video. =)
My single complaint so far: this Boxee software version still does not have a default setting I can change for disabling subtitles. Somewhat annoying that I have to turn off subtitles on a per video basis, but luckily I would guess less than 40% of our videos have subtitle tracks packaged.
Automatic organization and display of movies and tv shows with indexed episode names, images, posters, descriptions, actors, etc?
Plus interesting applications. I found the GiantBomb app on Boxee last night; now I can watch their HD video reviews on the big screen rather than my laptop.
Plus interesting applications. I found the GiantBomb app on Boxee last night; now I can watch their HD video reviews on the big screen rather than my laptop.
Got mine on Thurday. I love it. It organizes my movies and lists them perfectly.
Amazing amount of free web content. This box will only get even better when Hulu+, Netflix and Vudu go live in the next few months. Well worth the $199.
I had a Roku and a WDTV Live, well the Boxee replaces those two and I believe the boxee UI is better, faster and more user friendly. Oh, and the remote kicks @ss
Feel free to ask me any questions regarding.
Amazing amount of free web content. This box will only get even better when Hulu+, Netflix and Vudu go live in the next few months. Well worth the $199.
I had a Roku and a WDTV Live, well the Boxee replaces those two and I believe the boxee UI is better, faster and more user friendly. Oh, and the remote kicks @ss
Feel free to ask me any questions regarding.
Pre-ordered this product as soon as it became available on Amazon.com for it ease of use and intuitive user interface. I have been using the AppleTV hack for the past year and was hoping that the Boxee Box was going to be the exact same experience as it only Quicker! Received my Boxee Box yesterday and installed it on to my network and TV with great ease, was even happy the included an HDMI cable. I turned the device on and followed the easy to follow onscreen instructions to quickly log into my boxee account. It booted to the similar, easy to use, intuitive interface that I was so used to with AppleTV hack. I looked around and added my networked folders and decided to call it a night.
Thats when my glowing happy nirvana filled experience went to hell. The next morning I turned my TV on and wanted to play with it some more and found a little notice a the top of the screen stating a software upgrade was available. Like any good tech consumer would do, I quickly clicked the button for it to upgrade, in hopes of it adding some last minute tweaks that most 1.0 products get after shipping. Low and behold that when it rebooted, a crappy, low rendered, ugly and pathetic excuse for a user interface replaced my once BEAUTIFUL and COVETED Boxee Interface. BUYER BE AWARE! This new interface just turned the Boxee Box into a WORTHLESS P.O.S.!!!!!!! All the intuitiveness that came along with previous user interface is replaced with this experience that looks like it was baked up by some 4yo tech designer with no since aesthetics. First you'll notice that several of key Main Menu button have been buried several layers deep, such acces to your music, access to your photos, access to your friend feed, access to your to-do list! Those buttons that are left such as the TV and Movie folders drop you into a sparsely populated menu filled with online junk rather than simple to understand menus of before that first populated with your PERSONAL CONTENT, then gave you the choice to view what is available online! The I like the availability of online content when I CHOOSE to view it, LIKE the rest of the real world, need to see my personal content first and formost, and then the crap the world has to offer!
BAIT and SWITCH is what this feels like people! I will be returning my Boxee Box ASAP until BOXEE gets their UI act together!
Thats when my glowing happy nirvana filled experience went to hell. The next morning I turned my TV on and wanted to play with it some more and found a little notice a the top of the screen stating a software upgrade was available. Like any good tech consumer would do, I quickly clicked the button for it to upgrade, in hopes of it adding some last minute tweaks that most 1.0 products get after shipping. Low and behold that when it rebooted, a crappy, low rendered, ugly and pathetic excuse for a user interface replaced my once BEAUTIFUL and COVETED Boxee Interface. BUYER BE AWARE! This new interface just turned the Boxee Box into a WORTHLESS P.O.S.!!!!!!! All the intuitiveness that came along with previous user interface is replaced with this experience that looks like it was baked up by some 4yo tech designer with no since aesthetics. First you'll notice that several of key Main Menu button have been buried several layers deep, such acces to your music, access to your photos, access to your friend feed, access to your to-do list! Those buttons that are left such as the TV and Movie folders drop you into a sparsely populated menu filled with online junk rather than simple to understand menus of before that first populated with your PERSONAL CONTENT, then gave you the choice to view what is available online! The I like the availability of online content when I CHOOSE to view it, LIKE the rest of the real world, need to see my personal content first and formost, and then the crap the world has to offer!
BAIT and SWITCH is what this feels like people! I will be returning my Boxee Box ASAP until BOXEE gets their UI act together!
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