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
Video Decode Quality with HQV 2.0
One of the bugs in the currently available firmware for the Boxee Box is the constant buffering and stuttering of Blu-Ray M2TS files, even over USB. Unfortunately, the HQV 2.0 benchmark we have is a set of M2TS files from a Blu-Ray ISO. I had to put up with constant interruptions in the benchmarking videos, and as such I wasn't very comfortable tabulating the results. I tried repeating playback of each stream more than 3 times each to ensure that I had a fair idea of how the playback quality turned out.
| Boxee Box : HQV 2.0 Benchmark | ||||
| Test Class | Chapter | Tests | Max. Score | Boxee Box |
| Video Conversion | Video Resolution | Dial | 5 | 0 |
| Dial with Static Pattern | 5 | 5 | ||
| Gray Bars | 5 | 5 | ||
| Violin | 5 | 5 | ||
| Film Resolution | Stadium 2:2 | 5 | 0 | |
| Stadium 3:2 | 5 | 0 | ||
| Overlay On Film | Horizontal Text Scroll | 5 | 3 | |
| Vertical Text Scroll | 5 | 5 | ||
| Cadence Response Time | Transition to 3:2 Lock | 5 | 0 | |
| Transition to 2:2 Lock | 5 | 0 | ||
| Multi-Cadence | 2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCam Video | 5 | 0 | |
| 2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video | 5 | 0 | ||
| 3:2:3:2:2 24 FPS Vari-Speed | 5 | 0 | ||
| 5:5 12 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| 6:4 12 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| 8:7 8 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| Color Upsampling Errors | Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP) | 5 | 2 | |
| Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE) | 5 | 2 | ||
| Noise and Artifact Reduction | Random Noise | SailBoat | 5 | 0 |
| Flower | 5 | 0 | ||
| Sunrise | 5 | 0 | ||
| Harbour Night | 5 | 0 | ||
| Compression Artifacts | Scrolling Text | 5 | 3 | |
| Roller Coaster | 5 | 3 | ||
| Ferris Wheel | 5 | 3 | ||
| Bridge Traffic | 5 | 3 | ||
| Upscaled Compression Artifacts | Text Pattern | 5 | 3 | |
| Roller Coaster | 5 | 3 | ||
| Ferris Wheel | 5 | 3 | ||
| Bridge Traffic | 5 | 3 | ||
| Image Scaling and Enhancements | Scaling and Filtering | Luminance Frequency Bands | 5 | 2 |
| Chrominance Frequency Bands | 5 | 5 | ||
| Vanishing Text | 5 | 5 | ||
| Resolution Enhancement | Brook, Mountain, Flower, Hair, Wood | 15 | 10 | |
| Video Conversion | Contrast Enhancement | Theme Park | 5 | 0 |
| Driftwood | 5 | 0 | ||
| Beach at Dusk | 5 | 0 | ||
| White and Black Cats | 5 | 0 | ||
| Skin Tone Correction | Skin Tones | 10 | 0 | |
| Total Score | 210 | 73 | ||
The Boxee Box appears to fare a little bit better than the average WDTV type streamer even with the unreliable firmware. Do note that some of the tests simply make no sense for the Boxee Box because the knobs to activate and test out the features just don't exist (as Boxee probably doesn't want to befuddle the average user with some arcane menu options).
That said, one of the disappointing aspects revealed in the above benchmark is the complete lack of cadence detection. Hopefully, the end user doesn't want to spend too much time watching interlaced videos at non-native video refresh rates. Other than that, we wouldn't fault Boxee too much for not scoring higher in this benchmark.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
43 Comments
View All Comments
Ben90 - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
intipoo - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Looks like a nice little device for people who aren't so tech savy, but I would probably opt for a nettop or home built HTPC with the Boxee software instead. Thats all it is, after all, an Atom based PC with a funky design and the Boxee software.tipoo - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Its interesting that Boxee ditched the dual core Cortex A9 based Tegra 2 because it wasn't powerful enough for high bitrates, but Apple uses the A4 in the Apple TV which is a single core Cortex A8. Does that mean the ATV uses more compression/lower bitrates?tipoo - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
And speaking of which, would it be possible to run that video decode quality test on the ATV as well?azcoyote - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Does Apple do above 720p on Apple TV?In my experience they haven't/didn't.... ??
AmdInside - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
That's cause ATV is not doing 1080p, only 720p. I think the problem that was mentioned was 1080p high bit rate movies.solipsism - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
What kind of GPU does the Boxee Box have? What kind of HW decoder, if any does it have? Apple’s A4 package contains an Imagination PowerVR SGX GPU and PowerVR VXD decoder, so the Cortex-A8 can do other tasks. I assume Boxee and D-Link have done something similar, but to what extent?Lord Banshee - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Did you even read the review? It is all in the Intel CE4100, this is not an Atom this is a complete SoC.Page3
Intel CE4100
"There’s a dual stream 1080p video decoder that can offload H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4/DivX and VC-1 decoding at up to 60 fps (hardware accelerated JPEG decoding is also supported). Intel integrates a Tensilica HiFi 2 DSP that can decode everything you’d want to on a set-top box: Dolby Digital 5.1, TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, MP3, AAC and WMA9."
and
"The CE4100 GPU is the same PowerVR SGX 535 used in the MID/smartphone implementations of Atom. It runs at up to 400MHz depending on the particular CE4100 model you’re looking at."
Cygni - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
You can roll your own SFF PC for near the same price, and get the advantages of having a true HTPC.Barebones HTPC box
1.8 Conroe Celeron
1Gb DDR2
320GB HD
Win 7 Home Premium
$300 shipped.
And that little box can play everything Hulu's got, you can put full Boxee on it, can use Windows Media Center, can store files on the internal HD, etc. It won't be super snappy with that much RAM, but it will be faster than the Boxee Box!
azcoyote - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
So true... But devils advocate so on the other side of the coin...Form Factor (not that that weird cube thing works for me)
Remote Control
Turn Key
To be frank, if it gets the average Joe to get one, i am all for it...
We WANT to drive more streaming and less Cable/Satellite