boxee?

[reven]

has anyone checked out boxee? its really quite impressive, doesnt do tv functions (but i never use that anyway), it does internet tv really well, and has a really slick interface.

theres an alpha of it for windows (not publicly available, but im sure you could find it if you wanted to ) and theres version for max/linux freely available.

only wish i could get hulu to work in nz. but really good way to watch diggnation

[pz1]

A link to boxee might help the lazy reader like me

[gazoo]

XBMC does most of what Boxee does, albeit through plugins and scripts. You can watch CBS, NBC, CNN, youtube, "unofficially released" movies, pr0n, etc.

[reven]

yeah but does xbmc have the ratings thing boxee does? thats really cool, you can see what your friends like etc.

and i really love the apple trailers for movies, if you go through a large movie collection and you trying to find something you want to watch, you can view a trailer and see whats it like before deciding. that i really love.

[johnsonx42]

I've been using Zinc (http://www.zeevee.com/zinc) for streaming video, simply added it as a custom task in GB-PVR. It installs a customized version of firefox. Ironically, I find Netflix's Silverlight videos stream much smoother through Firefox/Zinc than they do through IE. Zinc also lets you add your local video library, though I've not played with that function.

[gazoo]

yeah but does xbmc have the ratings thing boxee does? thats really cool, you can see what your friends like etc.

and i really love the apple trailers for movies, if you go through a large movie collection and you trying to find something you want to watch, you can view a trailer and see whats it like before deciding. that i really love.

True, Boxee let's you do the social network stuff. I don't do any of that so XBMC is good enough for me. If you're doing the rating, social, etc. stuff then boxee is good.

[reven]

just installed xbmc, interface hasnt seem to change much since i was using it on my xbox (stopped using it about 4 years ago), and comparing it to the interface in boxee, it seems really outdated.

xbmc was a really really really good media centre back in the day, when it was new, but i think boxee has surpassed it. and when boxee does leave the alpha state, it will be a huge player in the media centre world.

the only problems i have with boxee are
1. doesnt work with my HIP remote
2. hardly any buttons available for remotes (its designed around the apple remote, which has only 6 buttons i believe).
3. doesnt do DXVA which makes playback of hidef videos not so good.
4. it crashes every now and again
5. youtube doesnt seem to work for me

its not going to replace gbpvr any time soon, but for watching internet tv (i love my diggnation/techzilla) its going to be my preferred way of doing it. oh and i love how it lets you watch trailers from apple for movies for vids in your collection.

but yeah its the interface, online community and online videos sources that has really impressed me.

[DrNic2032]

Others may disagree but I think boxee is WAY over-rated.

From my perspective it's just the mac-fanboy solution to the media center. The software was designed for a mac (well linux too I guess), and because of that it has the built in mac-fanboy crowd that likes ANYTHING related to macs. If you try to argue with them they just get cranky about it because that's the mac way. Their EXTREMELY slow adoption for PCs has been totally ridiculous.

That said, I've had a chance to use Boxee on my work mac while I was trying to decide what kind of HTPC I was going to build. All things considered the software was ok at best. Nothing super impressive, other than the fact that it's build for the facebook generation with lots of hooks into social networks and that kind of thing. Similar to XBMC really. I know this is the GB-PVR forum and all but honestly I still like GB-PVR the best of all of them. Best default skins, the stablest that I tried and EASY to setup.

[reven]

i agree about gbpvr being stable. its pretty much 100% stable, which is really rare when it comes to software (being a software developer and all).

but the thing that caught me on boxee was, internet streams (lets face it, thats where we are heading, everything will be streamed in the future). and the social side (i dont actually have any friends on boxee, but if i did i know this would be really useful).

but, no i havent switched. i was going to setup as a custom task, but my irtrans remote doesnt work with boxee, so havent gotten around to it. the only time i use it is on my iMac (and no im not a mac fanboy, i like macs, i really do, but i do think PCs are better, more customizable, more stable (my mac is always hanging with the stupid spinning icon (and its a 2008 high end mac) and its a lot slower than a pc).

i think boxee will grow into a huge player in the htpc realm, and its something to keep an eye on.

ok rant over (hopefully my grammar is ok, i always stuff up when i do long arse rants)