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
Trouble at the Main Event
Loading shows is slow. It’s not unbearable, but definitely not instantaneous. As you’ll see in the YouTube video I’ve embedded below, it took me around 25 seconds to start playing content once I’d selected it. That’s not exactly quick. Doing the same on a modern PC would take about 14 seconds (including loading a webpage and hitting play on the embedded video player.
It’s not just performance though, there are clear bugs in the software. I tried watching Conan and once I took it full screen elements of the webpage behind the full screen window would appear as thin white lines on top of the video.
Sometimes I’d try to watch a show (not on Fancast) and the full screen option was missing. No matter how many times I backed out and reloaded the full screen option just wouldn’t be there. I’d have to reset the Boxee Box to get it back.
Watching an episode of The Jersey Shore (Boxee made me do it) I encountered a strange stuttering problem. The audio remained in sync while video just chopped away. Exiting full screen mode usually alleviated the problem but sometimes it didn’t.
Sometimes you’d get a video that would just stop animating for a few seconds. Audio keeps going but the video just stops completely only to pick up a few seconds later.
A few times I’d be watching a show and audio would drop out halfway through watching it. There’s absolutely nothing you can do when this happens, absolutely nothing. Most shows won’t remember where you left off and most don’t support fast forward properly so you have to leave the browser, re-enter (or sometimes reset the Boxee Box) and watch the entire show again to get back to where you were.
While the fast forward function doesn’t work in the vast majority of cases, you can do it in the old fashion way. First, back out of full screen view to the browser with embedded video. Using the dpad on the remote you can move a mouse cursor to the progress bar in the embedded video player and use the center button on the remote to pick a time that’s close to where you left off. It’s an absolute pain to do this but it technically works. And therein lies the problem. Boxee’s ease of use falls apart when you have to deal with loading web pages, manually going into full screen mode, backing out when audio stops working, dealing with artifacts on the screen and having to occasionally restart the box.
The Boxee Box does have a tendency to crash a lot depending on what you’re doing. A lot of the background indexing can sometimes hang the system and force a reboot of the entire machine without any warning (which you’ll see a few times in the video above).
Every layman I showed the Boxee Box was put off by its performance and finicky behavior, usually saying something like “this is really slow, don’t give it a good review”, “this is stupid why is it in a little window like that? don’t give it a good review” or “are you going to give this thing a good review?”.
It’s easy to use for me and I think if you know how it works it’s not hard to get around its quirks, but dealing with these issues isn’t intuitive. People are used to just turning on the TV, picking the channel they want and watching a show. Boxee changes the way you choose content (you pick the show rather than the channel) but the watching a show part is made more complicated in the process, and that isn’t acceptable.
I should add that not all of it is Boxee’s fault. Ultimately all Boxee does is interact with the underlying webpage that embed the video content. This does limit what Boxee can do (e.g. fast forward). However I haven’t encountered nearly as many issues with video on the web on my Macs and PCs as I did with the Boxee Box.
When it works, it is actually very nice. You get a lot of shows, not necessarily the most current stuff on cable TV, but you get it all for free. Boxee does a good job organizing it and presenting it in a clean manner. There’s potential here, but in its current state the Boxee Box needs work. The good news is that Boxee has been incredibly proactive and transparent in its handling of bugs, which is more than I can say for many larger companies that compete in the CE space. Chances are if you have a bug you can reach someone who cares at Boxee who will eventually get it fixed. It’s just a matter of whether or not you’re fine with paying $199 for something that needs a few software updates already.
About Hulu
Boxee and Hulu have inked some sort of a deal to bring Hulu Plus to the Box. That means at some point, for $7.99 per month, you’ll get access to Hulu Plus on Boxee. It’s cheaper than cable at least.
If you want to however, you can use Boxee’s browser to navigate to Hulu.com and watch videos for free. Boxee doesn’t make it easy to do since the web browser is very slow, but it is possible.
You have to navigate to Hulu.com using the Boxee browser and search for the show you want via a super tiny interface. Thankfully you get a nice overlay for entering in text fields on web pages, which helps move things along.
Other content owner websites worked as well, although with varying degrees of success. With NBC I had stuttering video playback at times and had a lot of problems trying to get an ad to go away while watching The Office. Watching House on Fox’s website was mostly flawless.
I hate to say it but Boxee could stand to have some sort of a mouse as an input. I’m guessing a trackpad is probably the easiest to integrate into the current remote design.
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krotchy - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
They must use the same electronics supplier we do at my work."Oh we decided to buy 500,000 older revision PCBs because the forecast said to, even though you already pushed all of the paperwork for the latest PCB revision and we were told not to order the old one. We will just rework them until the existing stock is gone unless you want to pay us $2,000,000 to scrap them"
justaviking - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
For "average Joe" consumer products, I have ask myself, "Can I picture my wife using this?"I have to say, "No." She would probably make me return it within a week. Why?
- Inconsistent behavior. Sometimes you do this, sometimes you do that, other times you do something else. Full-screen display is an example of that.
- Lock-ups.
- Bugs.
- Sort of aggregated, but not really.
- A naming convention for files on your network? I don't see that happening any time soon in my house. I might do it, just out of habit, but my wife or kids? No way.
It's a good attempt.
I appreciate the challenge Boxee is faced with, and I'd be happy to pull the plug on my cable bill too, but I don't see it happening yet.
Jackattak - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Couldn't agree more. I would love to forcibly remove Comca$t out of our house, preferably kicking and screaming (mostly screaming), but this fails the wife test (and my wife is fairly tech-savvy).There has got to be a better way. This is not a consumer-ready product. This looked more like an alpha release review. Far too many bugs and far too little consistency.
Chillin1248 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
From what I understand from Boxee, the reason behind the strange (and internet download full) naming strings is due to the IMDB service that identifies the movies and shows. This is completely separate from Boxee.bernstein - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Quote: "You can’t build a similarly capable HTPC with better power characteristics than the Boxee Box (simply because Intel won’t sell you a CE4100)."This is just wrong... go to to www.pandaboard.org (or heck even a beagleboard) and get a beagleboard friendly build of linux/xbmc and you've definately got a more power-efficient htpc... best suited for 1080p playback...
and just how does a piece of hardware with 10w standby power have best power characteristics? heck not any notebook will consume anywhere near that power in standby...
now nough harsh words. great article, as always. a delight to read.
ganeshts - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Why do you think Boxee went off from Tegra 2 to Intel CE 4100? And the Pandaboard you are talking about is OMAP4 based.. Surprise Surprise.. OMAP4 host CPU = Tegra 2 host CPU, and the power profile of both is approximately the same.. so the capabilities of both are going to be similar.. in other words, don't expect 1080p60 or any other complex encoding playback!vhawkxi - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
My sister brought me one from Canada as South Africa is again looked over as a country where people would like to have the device.I just love it, so much better than the MVIX device I had to use as media streamer up to now.
The networking works flawlessly and the 802.11 n wireless is more than sufficient to watch content in 1080p 24Hz.
Contents is currently an issue but as soon as Hulu is up and running, I will have access to the source I have been using on the software version. So I am happy with that.
The browser is still a work in progress but I assume it will eventually get there and allow nice browsing on my TV.
So overall - even at $199 which I was more than happy to pay - it is a nice product with great potential - and it has already received 2 system upgraded in the last week. Much more than one can say of similar devices that gets bug fixes once or twice a year.
Well done dudes - this may still be a winner !!
trip1ex - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
About as expected. IT's a device that wants to give the consumer something it can't deliver - free cable tv.It's telling that the article felt it had to have the same number of pros as cons. YOu can tell this is the case when one pro says "it can only get better."
And another says, "they are pro-active at fixing bugs."
I sense some allegiance to Boxee. Maybe because they are a small company. Or because they have a personal relationship with those at the company.
In any case ....why wouldn't the folks who would tolerate bugs and problems just use a pc with their TV in the first place?
wadsworth - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
Love it. The new Thanksgiving firmware update fixed a ton of issues I had with 720p and 1080p non-MP4 codecs. The thing played everything I threw at it, from flv to mkv. The show/movie stuff was okay, but nothing compared to the "apps" component IMO. It is up to 142 web interface apps with everything from MediaFly to YouPorn. Heck, I didn't even know Sarah Lane was doing stuff with Leo nowadays. Moving through your own files is fast/smooth, unlike my WD TV Live.saltyzip - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Boxee has so much promise, but it doesn't deliver on the most important aspect which is speed and reliability, especially when it comes to HD content.I have evaluated the free downloadable version for the PC and posted my views on their forum, only to be flamed by the moderators for expressing my constructive criticism.
No support for blu-ray or HD streaming is a big issue in my books, but the general reliability of playing any kind of content is really a hit and miss experience.
I had crashing, videos only showing on half the screen, resolution not changing to reflect the media being played so was jerky.
Why would anyone want to put this onto a TV in the living room, it would drive my misses nuts.
It needs at least another year to get it right, but by then it will be too late.