The Boxee Box Experience Now: Netflix, Vudu HD and Lots More Refinement | Hacker News Reader

The Boxee Box Experience Now: Netflix, Vudu HD and Lots More Refinement

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33 pointsMojoKid26 comments

I have a lot of local video files, and I've (briefly) tried the Boxee software a couple times. It has a feature where it tries to identify that media, but I've found it to be comedically awful at doing so, especially when it comes to TV series, where it tends to pick out maybe one or two episodes from a given series directory, then for some reason completely ignore the rest, even though they're all following the same format in their respective filenames.

Does anyone know of a way to just turn this off entirely? I already have things organized by directory/filename. From what I can tell, the current 'solution' is to manually go through each file and fix whatever stupid information was auto-detected. Which is backwards, because if someone's anal enough to deal with that, they've likely already got things meticulously organized how they want by directory/filename, so why not just go by that directly?

I get the strong impression that they didn't really make local media playback a priority.

Also pisses me off that it doesn't let you delete stuff you've watched from the interface.

I ended up having to write an app to tail my boxee log looking for files that have been watched and then moving them into a "watched" directory where they are purged several days later.

I unboxed a Boxee Box yesterday and was quite impressed. It's a tiny powerhouse at a great price point ($199 on Amazon). The remote is quite clever and made it easy to type, something that's often annoying with these types of set top boxes. I got online and it easily found and cataloged video files on a shared USB drive plugged into the wireless router--DVD covers, episode summaries, the works. The mobile app is a slick way to control it as well and it found it automatically--zero configuration.

My only gripe so far is there is no Amazon VOD support yet, but I only have that gripe because it's now free as a Prime member.

I bought a Boxee over the Christmas holidays and have loved every minute of it.

Over the years I've built tons of HTPC's (dating back to 1999) and have had to put up with all of the strengths and weaknesses related to the variety of solutions.

I've loved the array of options in regards to small boxes that make HTPC's mostly irrelevant.

The D-Link Boxee Box is the best overall solution I've used to date. Does it have some problems? Yep -- but they're never really in the way of me doing what I want to do with the device.

It has also had an excellent WAF.

I seriously recommend .. especially if you consume lots of divx/mkv/x264 media.

Curious if you used the Boxee interface on a homemade setup prior to getting the official device...?

Mostly wondering if official package offers a tight enough experience to warrant the $200 vs. getting by on a spare laptop + Boxee.

I used to run boxee from a macbookpro onto my main television in the living room. This worked surprisingly well alongside either the Apple remote or Boxee Controller App.

Moving and re-hooking up my main computer to watch media was obviously tedious, so I ordered a Boxee Box at launch.

The Boxee Box simplified the hell out of my media experience, which is definitely worth the $200 price tag. A laptop would probably work just fine, but the Box has the new 1.0 software, and the remote included is pretty great.

In my experience the spare laptop + Boxee + Netflix experience has been awful and I instead just go the spare laptop + Netflix through the browser route. If the D-Link hardware Netflix experience is as responsive as the browser experience, I'm sold.

I ran it on an HTPC for about a month before I bought the Boxee Box.

For a HTPC, you have to do a one-time organize to get your files in order. For movies, it's helpful to add the year to the title. For TV, it's helpful to organize so that the season/ep is in a standard format like S0XEXX. Once you do that it's pretty flawless. If you run SickBeard + a bittorrent client, you can pretty much automate things 100%. It's a very smooth setup once you get through the initial hurdles of organizing your downloads.

Does anybody know how it works with video sites that only have a web interface & flash player? I'm thinking of Tai Seng (http://mytv.taiseng.com/, a Cantonese movie site my wife watches that's based on the same tech as Crunchroll).

Just download boxee for the PC and try it out, it's free.

Thanks for the tip -- will do!

That's usually not good enough since the Boxee Box handles flash website different than the version that you download and install yourself. For instance, many sites on the DL version start in full screen but with the Boxee Box they don't. I think this was done to satisfy content owners but it significantly hampers my experience with the Box.

They do try to do two clever things with the box to make this better: Hit menu and sometimes there is a full screen button, sometimes not. Also, they try to place the mouse cursor over the "Fullscreen Button" in the Flash player, but this is wonky at best.

I gave it a try, and at least on the Windows version, their browser crashes if you mouse over the wrong areas or click the wrong buttons (on mytv.taiseng.com).

Some of the shows listed in the TV directory (Comedy Central shows, for example) load it in a browser, and you have to manually maneuver a cursor to the fullscreen button. One of the Apps on the box is a simple web browser, that would allow you to navigate anywhere.

That said, Boxee has small handful of shows/networks that automatically switch to fullscreen for you – but those seem few and far between.

Is that really the shape of the case? It looks ridiculous!

EDIT: I used boxee about 6 - 9 months ago an old XP machine and it was nice, but still enough rough edges to be annoying at times. As anyone used it recently on say, a mac mini and apple remote?

I've been using it for 4 months now on my linux HTPC. It's been fantastic. I control it using the boxee remote app for iPhone.

I'm thinking of getting a boxee box just for the added netflix support, dedicated remote, and increased reliability. But I heard the UI is different from the PC version, does anyone know if that's true?

Boxee Box is running v1.xxx of Boxee software while the downloadable version you can put on your own computer is still at 0.9xxx

The 1.xxx versions have an updated interface.

Really? I love the design of the box and the remote.

For me, the experience with boxee has been great. I use it everyday and love it. I have it hooked up with a NAS and indexing files etc is pretty good.

I love the remote it looks awesome. Just the shape of that box makes it seem like it would awkward to place it anywhere.

Since the remove is RF vs. IR you can actually put the thing just about anywhere. Mine sits behind my TV.

Boxee or Roku? I've been wanting to buy one of them but can't decide.

Roku if all you want to watch is netflix and some other streaming services (which I can't enumerate right now). Boxee if you'd like to watch a lot of local content as well streamed over your network. I ended up choosing Boxee the day after they announced Netflix support had been implemented.

Does Boxee play Video_TS files with DVD menus and the whole nine?

Yes it does. It also can handle ISOs (DVD & BluRay).

Thanks. Good to know. I'll add the Boxee Box to my super short list.

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