Boxee Box: The Inside Story, Swapping Tegra 2 for Intel CE4100

Now that we have an understanding of the new platform which will be powering the Boxee Box, it can be said that it wouldn't be unfair to expect as close an experience on this to what one gets with a HTPC version of Boxee. That said, we did have some queries for Boxee, and they were kind enough to get back to us with answers. Based on our interaction, the pros and cons of the Boxee Box as it stands now are as below:

Pros:

1. Bitstreams HD audio from MKV, M2TS and ISO containers
2. uPnP support (DLNA certification will be a technicality)
3. DVD and Blu-Ray ISO support without menus
4. 3D playback of content which can be transferred through HDMI 1.3
5. Multichannel FLAC supported
6. Gapless audio playback supported
7. PGS and forced subtitles in MKV supported
8. Support for SSA / ASS subtitles (first for a dedicated media streamer as far as we know)

Cons:

1. Premium content partners not announced yet
2. Only SMB and AFS (HFS+) supported for network storage as of now (No NFS / FTP etc.)
3. No menu support for DVD and Blu-Ray ISOs as of now.
4. HDMI 1.4a support not possible
5. No support for MKV chapters as of now
6. No support for playback of DRM content from external Blu-Ray or DVD drives as of now.

Some aspects on which we are awaiting further clarification:

1. Support for native resolution / frame rate
2. Support for 23.976 Hz refresh rate
3. Extent of hackability of firmware for open source developers
4. Nature of the 802.11n support
5. Power consumption profile
6. Support for Real Media
    

From the demo that we were able to see, most of the generic online content is easily accessible, and the WebKit browser is always a fallback option. As the firmware matures further, most of the above cons should disappear. We should get a good look at the capabilities and test out Boxee's claims for ourselves once we receive the review unit. Boxee also went the extra step and requested a copy of our media streamer test suite. This should help them fix up any minor corner case requirements with respect to video decode. As for the other details, we will have to wait for the unit to reach our hands.