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CES Begins: Boxee Box by D-Link and More

I'm loving these new boxes, I was looking at getting a WD TV Live but it just seemed so limited. Now it looks like it is going to come down to either the Boxee box or Popbox.

And OH BOY I can't wait to get one of those new fangled Mac routers, I have been waiting for wireless internet for ages! :rolleyes:
 
I don't know...I like the idea of the Boxee box.

I have been on the fence about an AppleTV but I have not pulled the trigger because I really want to be able to access internet streams as well as my iTunes content. If this provides that, without having to hack anything, I might be interested. Especially since I have ditched cable.
 
have to say i like the idea of the boxee box... i've been screwing around with htpc's for the past year... just recently installed boxee and it's the best interface i've seen so far.

hope it has a hard drive as i don't think i'd want to have to stream everything over wifi.
 
slu said:
I don't know...I like the idea of the Boxee box.

I have been on the fence about an AppleTV but I have not pulled the trigger because I really want to be able to access internet streams as well as my iTunes content. If this provides that, without having to hack anything, I might be interested. Especially since I have ditched cable.
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Pretty much my place right now, save for ditching of the pay service. Trying to decide on my media server setup prior to doing that. This Boxee thing, 'might' just add another element worth looking into prior to jumping into a Mac Mini server setup.
 
I wish designers of TV & Audio devices would give some thought as to where they are going to be used rather than just go all-out on looking sexy in photos and on the store shelf. Most users are going to want/need a regular shaped slim box device that will fit inside their TV/audio racks or sit discretely next to their TVs, not some 'look at me' device that looks like it should be sat on a spotlit pedestal in a modern art exhibition, nice as it may be.
 
Roessnakhan said:
I love Boxee. Its turned my Mac mini into a great media center. Couple it with Rowmote pro for iPod touch/iPhone and you've got a great system.
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you prefer boxee over plex?

I never got on with boxee. I have more offline content that I want to watch, and boxee seemed to focus more on 'internet video' stuff. Also, it didn't let you have separate TV and Movie folders for content - it worked it out for you 'intelligently'. Result being that it thought most of my firefly episodes were movies..

If its improved since then I'll take another look though. I like the idea of an iphone app that works closely with my mini, and plex doesn't really have that yet
 
NightFox said:
I wish designers of TV & Audio devices would give some thought as to where they are going to be used rather than just go all-out on looking sexy in photos and on the store shelf. Most users are going to want/need a regular shaped slim box device that will fit inside their TV/audio racks or sit discretely next to their TVs, not some 'look at me' device that looks like it should be sat on a spotlit pedestal in a modern art exhibition, nice as it may be.
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Have you seen the box's actual size? I have to admit when I first saw the design I thought that it was too big and too odd a size to work in most peoples set-ups, however when I saw the picture of it next to a can of coke that gave it some scale I realised that its actually pretty small! So it should fit fine on a shelf/in a TV/audio rack.



Also the remote is RF not IR so you can just bung the box somewhere out of the way as it does not need a line of sight
 

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Stelph said:
Have you seen the box's actual size? I have to admit when I first saw the design I thought that it was too big and too odd a size to work in most peoples set-ups, however when I saw the picture of it next to a can of coke that gave it some scale I realised that its actually pretty small! So it should fit fine on a shelf/in a TV/audio rack.



Also the remote is RF not IR so you can just bung the box somewhere out of the way as it does not need a line of sight
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No, I have to admit I didn't look into it and didn't realise it was that small. Better, yes, but I still think there's a case of design over practicality.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
You do know you're on an Apple forum, right? :D
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But at least for the most part Apple's designs are usually practical. an Apple TV or Mac Mini in your living room doesnt stick out like a sore thumb. You don't need eye catching devices for your entertainment system. You watch the TV, not the box.
 
I had an interest in a Boxee box, until I found out that apparently it doesn't have Hulu (because of Hulu, NOT Boxee.)

I had thought it would be a nice alternative for our guest room which has internet access but no cable outlet. I also have an Apple TV in our living room (where I have cable), but the problem with solely having an Apple TV and no cable is the availability of content. With Hulu I would have been able to watch a wide array of programming at no monetary cost.

An Apple TV is great for all the digital media that you own, but not for finding the random thing to entertain you for 30 minutes or an hour.
 
re: Why no hard drive?

You'd think they would, but I imagine one big issue with that is the risk of data loss. That's one of my big complaints right now with my AT&T U-Verse service. The DVR box they include locks down all the recorded content so tightly, there's no way to do anything useful with it, even if you do go the lengths necessary to get it copied off to another drive in a computer someplace. Therefore, if the drive dies in the DVR, I lose everything I ever saved on it. That makes it a device I only really care to use when I'm "time-shifting" some content to watch later, vs. a way to actually keep a recording long-term.

If you encourage people to store their recorded content on a real server-class system (with RAID drive mirroring or RAID 5 striping, or at *least* a system attached that does nightly backups of some sort), you have a much more viable way to store you digital content. (At that point, you really can start getting rid of your old VHS tapes and DVDs, and just retain everything in digital format.)


DigMe said:
Why don't these people that are making all these media streaming devices slap a decent hard drive in there and have them double as DVRs?! It seems so easy and obvious and yet here comes another one in addition to Apple TV, Seagate, WD, Roku etc.. that have these media streamers that could so easily double as DVRs. I use an antenna to pick up my digital programming and I don't want to build an entire second media computer, I don't want to pay a subscription for TIVO and there doesn't seem to be any decently priced, dedicated DVR machines that could fulfill this function for me.
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