Check Out the Boxee Box Interface - This Thing is Slick

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/boxee-box-interface-demo-video/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/...ace-demo-video/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"We're already gone hands-on with the Boxee Box and its sweet QWERTY RF remote, but now that we know there's a dual-core Tegra 2 in there it's time for a little interface demo with founder Avner Ronen."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/wpt/auto/1263025732.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I got a chance to spend some time with the Boxee interface, and I have to say, it impressed me. For years, I've watched companies crank out some great made-in-Taiwan NAS/media streamer hardware with good codec support and lots of features, shackled by a brain-dead made-in-Taiwan user interface. It's kept me from every purchasing a device - but Boxee has such a great UI that I think I may use this as the main interface to my media...leaving the loud, streaming/codec-crippled Xbox 360 behind. Boxee and D-Link may have hit a home run with this thing - <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/boxee-box-interface-demo-video/" target="_blank">check out the demo over at Engadget</a>.</p>

[whydidnt]

If you are real curious, you can also download the Boxee beta and install it on a spare PC and play with it yourself. I did this yesterday, and it is really a delight to use. I'm planning on deploying this as a replacement for a PS3 that I use for media streaming in my family room. I think it will be much easier to use for the family than the PS3, I won't have to worry about codec support, or the WHS streaming file type limitations, etc. I just set up access the videos folder on the WHS, let Boxee index the movies and there you go.

A couple of other points-

Boxee pulls in DVD cover art and movie descriptions from IMDB, no need to create your own XML file. If you have a large collection, this could take a while.

They include many "apps" which are plugins to things like YouTube and other internet TV channels. You just click and play, very easy. No scripts, etc. to install.

It worked right away with a Media Center Remote I had.

I did have some problems rendering videos on a fresh Windows 7 install on a 3 year old laptop. A common problem if you check the Boxee forums. I had to install DirectX runtimes from the Microsoft site, and after doing that, they started working. Not sure why those aren't included in a new install / MS update of Windows 7, but there you go.

So far, I've been very impressed with the windows software, and if the hardware they demoed can hold up to streaming hi quality movies over a network they should have a winner.

[doogald]

Boxee is nice. The last time that I tried it on my Mac, it didn't seem to support iTunes playlists too well. However, it may be time to play with this again...

[Macguy59]

The beta is a little buggy at least on a Mac but it's a big UI improvement.