The Boxee Box Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Ganesh T S on November 23, 2010 5:42 PM EST- Posted in
- Gadgets
- Media Streamer
- HTPC
- Boxee Box
Music & Photos
Boxee’s Files hub also enables music and photo streaming from networked and attached storage.
The Box does a great job finding music and displaying album art, but that’s pretty much the extent of what Boxee can do with your MP3s. There’s no quick way to search for songs and no playlist support from what I can tell. You can just view your music collection by album or by artist.
The photos browser includes all folders with any photos in them, so you need to be careful to keep your photos segregated from things like apps. Despite Boxee’s intelligence, it does help to create individual shares based on the type of content you have (e.g. a share for pictures, a share for music, a share for movies, etc...).
Although RAW files appear in the file browser, I couldn’t get the Boxee Box to load any .NEF files taken with my Nikon D700. Performance is also a problem. Some thumbnails appear quickly while others can take a very long time to show up.
By default there’s a ridiculous amount of Ken Burns effect applied to any slideshow (you can disable it in the settings menu), and viewing photos in any directory becomes a slideshow by default. The play/pause button on the remote comes in handy.
You zoom and rotate photos using onscreen controls. The zoom function desperately needs some sort of multitouch interface, while rotate is pretty quick.
The integrated SD/MMC card reader is a great way to display photos on your TV. It’s a nice addition to the Box.
Apps
Like almost everything these days, the Boxee Box supports apps. For the most part these aren’t apps like you’d find on your smartphone, but rather collections of video content from the web. A surprising number of companies/websites have Boxee apps. There’s YouTube Leanback, revision3, TED, Flickr, Wired, cnet TV, Fail Blog, and Reddit TV among others.
You can favorite apps as well so you don’t have to scroll through the list of 100+ Boxee apps to find what you’re looking for. The apps hub is also how you get get direct access to the Boxee Browser.
There’s tons of really good free video content online and Boxee apps are a great way to get access to it. I was actually surprised by how big the Boxee app ecosystem already was.
Turn off adult mode in the settings menu and you’ll even get some porn apps, just in case you wanted a quick way to get your favorite internet porn onto your TV.
Boxee does support background operation of apps. The Pandora app keeps running (and playing music) even after you back out of the app. The Boxee menu gains a play/pause button and tell you the name of the track you’re currently listening to. Selecting the Pandora widget brings up more playback controls and a visualization. As soon as you start playing any content that has audio however Pandora pauses automatically.
The Pandora app itself is just like what you get by visiting the webpage. You give it your login information and you get full access to all of your stations. You can like/dislike songs, skip forward and even create new stations.
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krotchy - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
They must use the same electronics supplier we do at my work."Oh we decided to buy 500,000 older revision PCBs because the forecast said to, even though you already pushed all of the paperwork for the latest PCB revision and we were told not to order the old one. We will just rework them until the existing stock is gone unless you want to pay us $2,000,000 to scrap them"
justaviking - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
For "average Joe" consumer products, I have ask myself, "Can I picture my wife using this?"I have to say, "No." She would probably make me return it within a week. Why?
- Inconsistent behavior. Sometimes you do this, sometimes you do that, other times you do something else. Full-screen display is an example of that.
- Lock-ups.
- Bugs.
- Sort of aggregated, but not really.
- A naming convention for files on your network? I don't see that happening any time soon in my house. I might do it, just out of habit, but my wife or kids? No way.
It's a good attempt.
I appreciate the challenge Boxee is faced with, and I'd be happy to pull the plug on my cable bill too, but I don't see it happening yet.
Jackattak - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Couldn't agree more. I would love to forcibly remove Comca$t out of our house, preferably kicking and screaming (mostly screaming), but this fails the wife test (and my wife is fairly tech-savvy).There has got to be a better way. This is not a consumer-ready product. This looked more like an alpha release review. Far too many bugs and far too little consistency.
Chillin1248 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
From what I understand from Boxee, the reason behind the strange (and internet download full) naming strings is due to the IMDB service that identifies the movies and shows. This is completely separate from Boxee.bernstein - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Quote: "You can’t build a similarly capable HTPC with better power characteristics than the Boxee Box (simply because Intel won’t sell you a CE4100)."This is just wrong... go to to www.pandaboard.org (or heck even a beagleboard) and get a beagleboard friendly build of linux/xbmc and you've definately got a more power-efficient htpc... best suited for 1080p playback...
and just how does a piece of hardware with 10w standby power have best power characteristics? heck not any notebook will consume anywhere near that power in standby...
now nough harsh words. great article, as always. a delight to read.
ganeshts - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Why do you think Boxee went off from Tegra 2 to Intel CE 4100? And the Pandaboard you are talking about is OMAP4 based.. Surprise Surprise.. OMAP4 host CPU = Tegra 2 host CPU, and the power profile of both is approximately the same.. so the capabilities of both are going to be similar.. in other words, don't expect 1080p60 or any other complex encoding playback!vhawkxi - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
My sister brought me one from Canada as South Africa is again looked over as a country where people would like to have the device.I just love it, so much better than the MVIX device I had to use as media streamer up to now.
The networking works flawlessly and the 802.11 n wireless is more than sufficient to watch content in 1080p 24Hz.
Contents is currently an issue but as soon as Hulu is up and running, I will have access to the source I have been using on the software version. So I am happy with that.
The browser is still a work in progress but I assume it will eventually get there and allow nice browsing on my TV.
So overall - even at $199 which I was more than happy to pay - it is a nice product with great potential - and it has already received 2 system upgraded in the last week. Much more than one can say of similar devices that gets bug fixes once or twice a year.
Well done dudes - this may still be a winner !!
trip1ex - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
About as expected. IT's a device that wants to give the consumer something it can't deliver - free cable tv.It's telling that the article felt it had to have the same number of pros as cons. YOu can tell this is the case when one pro says "it can only get better."
And another says, "they are pro-active at fixing bugs."
I sense some allegiance to Boxee. Maybe because they are a small company. Or because they have a personal relationship with those at the company.
In any case ....why wouldn't the folks who would tolerate bugs and problems just use a pc with their TV in the first place?
wadsworth - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
Love it. The new Thanksgiving firmware update fixed a ton of issues I had with 720p and 1080p non-MP4 codecs. The thing played everything I threw at it, from flv to mkv. The show/movie stuff was okay, but nothing compared to the "apps" component IMO. It is up to 142 web interface apps with everything from MediaFly to YouPorn. Heck, I didn't even know Sarah Lane was doing stuff with Leo nowadays. Moving through your own files is fast/smooth, unlike my WD TV Live.saltyzip - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Boxee has so much promise, but it doesn't deliver on the most important aspect which is speed and reliability, especially when it comes to HD content.I have evaluated the free downloadable version for the PC and posted my views on their forum, only to be flamed by the moderators for expressing my constructive criticism.
No support for blu-ray or HD streaming is a big issue in my books, but the general reliability of playing any kind of content is really a hit and miss experience.
I had crashing, videos only showing on half the screen, resolution not changing to reflect the media being played so was jerky.
Why would anyone want to put this onto a TV in the living room, it would drive my misses nuts.
It needs at least another year to get it right, but by then it will be too late.