I’ve been looking forward to the Boxee Box for quite a while, for three reasons:
Having tried numerous Internet/TV solutions already, I have tempered expectations for this thing. Mainly, I want something little and quiet, with a decent interface that my wife can use, and which will stream photos and music. I have a TON of music, but very few movies on my local network, so the music piece is a big deal for me. I also occasionally want to watch videos from the web. I don’t realistically expect to replace cable at this point, but I’d like to be surprised.
Hardware
The packaging was impressive, not unlike an Apple unboxing experience. The Boxee Box itself is decent quality, mostly what you’d expect if you’ve been following the press about this thing at all. It’s black plastic, with a glowing frog face on the front. (My daughter is rather bothered by the glowing frog.) It has numerous audio out options (HDMI, optical, and composite stereo) but for video out, HDMI is all you get. It supports WiFi and Ethernet — I hooked it up wired-style to my Gigabit ethernet in the house. There are also USB ports and an SD reader but I have no intention of using these.
The box is basically silent, which is great. All my previous web+TV devices have sounded like vacuums as soon as you turn on some HD video.
Performance is good, but not mind-blowing. Streaming is indeed beautiful — I’m streaming music and navigating libraries simultaneously without any problems. I was underwhelmed with video playback from NBC.com, but I haven’t tested this out too much yet.
Initial Config
After plugging it in, it immediately picked up my local network and performed an update, requiring a reboot. After that it was smooth sailing — it auto-detected all the Samba shares on my local network (I mainly use an Ubuntu server) and I could easily hook up my music and photos folders with barely any effort.
Remote
This was the biggest sell for me, the full-blown QWERTY keyboard remote with a sane interface on the other side. I do like it, but my main gripe is that the keyboard isn’t integrated as much as I’d like in the Boxee software. For example, when I’m browsing the hundreds of artists in my music library, I’d like to type “R” and jump to the artists that begin with “R.” No dice — typing just brings up the search box. And the search box doesn’t appear to search my local music and photo libraries, either, just video content. Boxee is clearly pushing the video aspect.
Otherwise the remote is a pleasant experience, it does what it should and works at distances without line of sight.
Software
I’ve already run Boxee on a Mac mini, so I knew what I was in for. Basically, you get Boxee. Try it out first if you’re interested in buying this. I have a laundry list of gripes with the software, but mainly I think it has a ton of currently unrealized potential.
Here’s my biggest problems right now:
- Missing apps: no Netflix or Hulu Plus, Vudu’s not working yet, and no Last.fm app. The former three are happening eventually; I’m paying the early adopter tax in this regard. The apps that are here (like Flickr) are OK but not likely to be used much.
- Photos and Music were surreptitiously buried into the “Files” section in the new interface. This blows.
- As many have said, the new post-beta interface is a step backwards. Fonts are worse, the home screen is less useful, and the overall feel just isn’t as nice. It’s fine, but not what it looked like it was going to be.
All that said, I see a ton of promise, and I think it’s going to be great in a couple of months after they get some apps and updates out the door. For now, it’s a somewhat pricey media streamer with a handful of options for Internet video.
No Comments