

The Boxee Box Experience Now: Netflix, Vudu HD and Lots More Refinement - MojoKid
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Boxee-Box-HD-Media-Player-Updated-and-Netflix-Ready/

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beoba
I have a lot of local video files, and I've (briefly) tried the Boxee software
a couple times. It has a feature where it tries to identify that media, but
I've found it to be comedically awful at doing so, especially when it comes to
TV series, where it tends to pick out maybe one or two episodes from a given
series directory, then for some reason completely ignore the rest, even though
they're all following the same format in their respective filenames.

Does anyone know of a way to just turn this off entirely? I already have
things organized by directory/filename. From what I can tell, the current
'solution' is to manually go through each file and fix whatever stupid
information was auto-detected. Which is backwards, because if someone's anal
enough to deal with that, they've likely already got things meticulously
organized how they want by directory/filename, so why not just go by that
directly?

I get the strong impression that they didn't really make local media playback
a priority.

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mike-cardwell
Also pisses me off that it doesn't let you delete stuff you've watched from
the interface.

I ended up having to write an app to tail my boxee log looking for files that
have been watched and then moving them into a "watched" directory where they
are purged several days later.

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jonknee
I unboxed a Boxee Box yesterday and was quite impressed. It's a tiny
powerhouse at a great price point ($199 on Amazon). The remote is quite clever
and made it easy to type, something that's often annoying with these types of
set top boxes. I got online and it easily found and cataloged video files on a
shared USB drive plugged into the wireless router--DVD covers, episode
summaries, the works. The mobile app is a slick way to control it as well and
it found it automatically--zero configuration.

My only gripe so far is there is no Amazon VOD support yet, but I only have
that gripe because it's now free as a Prime member.

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dualboot
I bought a Boxee over the Christmas holidays and have loved every minute of
it.

Over the years I've built tons of HTPC's (dating back to 1999) and have had to
put up with all of the strengths and weaknesses related to the variety of
solutions.

I've loved the array of options in regards to small boxes that make HTPC's
mostly irrelevant.

The D-Link Boxee Box is the best overall solution I've used to date. Does it
have some problems? Yep -- but they're never really in the way of me doing
what I want to do with the device.

It has also had an excellent WAF.

I seriously recommend .. especially if you consume lots of divx/mkv/x264
media.

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jamesbkel
Curious if you used the Boxee interface on a homemade setup prior to getting
the official device...?

Mostly wondering if official package offers a tight enough experience to
warrant the $200 vs. getting by on a spare laptop + Boxee.

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stublag
I used to run boxee from a macbookpro onto my main television in the living
room. This worked surprisingly well alongside either the Apple remote or Boxee
Controller App.

Moving and re-hooking up my main computer to watch media was obviously
tedious, so I ordered a Boxee Box at launch.

The Boxee Box simplified the hell out of my media experience, which is
definitely worth the $200 price tag. A laptop would probably work just fine,
but the Box has the new 1.0 software, and the remote included is pretty great.

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robk
For a HTPC, you have to do a one-time organize to get your files in order. For
movies, it's helpful to add the year to the title. For TV, it's helpful to
organize so that the season/ep is in a standard format like S0XEXX. Once you
do that it's pretty flawless. If you run SickBeard + a bittorrent client, you
can pretty much automate things 100%. It's a very smooth setup once you get
through the initial hurdles of organizing your downloads.

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larsberg
Does anybody know how it works with video sites that only have a web interface
& flash player? I'm thinking of Tai Seng (<http://mytv.taiseng.com/>, a
Cantonese movie site my wife watches that's based on the same tech as
Crunchroll).

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jonny_eh
Just download boxee for the PC and try it out, it's free.

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maineldc
That's usually not good enough since the Boxee Box handles flash website
different than the version that you download and install yourself. For
instance, many sites on the DL version start in full screen but with the Boxee
Box they don't. I think this was done to satisfy content owners but it
significantly hampers my experience with the Box.

They do try to do two clever things with the box to make this better: Hit menu
and sometimes there is a full screen button, sometimes not. Also, they try to
place the mouse cursor over the "Fullscreen Button" in the Flash player, but
this is wonky at best.

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larsberg
I gave it a try, and at least on the Windows version, their browser crashes if
you mouse over the wrong areas or click the wrong buttons (on
mytv.taiseng.com).

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ecoffey
Is that really the shape of the case? It looks ridiculous!

EDIT: I used boxee about 6 - 9 months ago an old XP machine and it was nice,
but still enough rough edges to be annoying at times. As anyone used it
recently on say, a mac mini and apple remote?

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charlesdm
Really? I love the design of the box and the remote.

For me, the experience with boxee has been great. I use it everyday and love
it. I have it hooked up with a NAS and indexing files etc is pretty good.

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ecoffey
I love the remote it looks awesome. Just the shape of that box makes it seem
like it would awkward to place it anywhere.

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dualboot
Since the remove is RF vs. IR you can actually put the thing just about
anywhere. Mine sits behind my TV.

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bennesvig
Boxee or Roku? I've been wanting to buy one of them but can't decide.

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mxavier
Roku if all you want to watch is netflix and some other streaming services
(which I can't enumerate right now). Boxee if you'd like to watch a lot of
local content as well streamed over your network. I ended up choosing Boxee
the day after they announced Netflix support had been implemented.

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kenjackson
Does Boxee play Video_TS files with DVD menus and the whole nine?

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stublag
Yes it does. It also can handle ISOs (DVD & BluRay).

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kenjackson
Thanks. Good to know. I'll add the Boxee Box to my super short list.

