Digital Home Thoughts: Engadget Reviews the Boxee Box

"It's a little strange that the Boxee Box by D-Link feels like a late entrant in this year's crowded smart TV market -- the core Boxee software has been around forever, and the Box itself was announced way back in January at CES. But a platform switch from NVIDIA's Tegra 2 chip to Intel's Atom-based CE4100 platform cost Boxee and D-Link valuable time, while the Boxee software went through a dramatic UI transformation from the beta to 1.0. What's more, Boxee's gone from being an upstart rock'n'roll rebel to a legit market player, with a Netflix deal on the books and -- wonder of wonders -- an agreement to bring Hulu Plus to the Boxee Box sometime next year. That's a lot of changes, and, quite frankly, a lot of hype -- Boxee's dedicated fans are expecting the small company and its asymmetrical Box to show up no less than Apple and Google. So have Boxee CEO Avner Ronen and company pulled it off?"

Engadget has put the Boxee Box through its paces, and the end result is mixed: they feel it's the most capable media streamer on the market, with strong codec (file format) support, but at the moment it's more of a rough draft than a finished product. I've had one for a bit over a week now, and feel similarly - it's an extremely powerful product with lots of potential, but out of the box there are more than a few glitches.

The real question is what Boxee is going to do about it? In this forum thread, they hit on most of the issues I'm currently having with the product - and that gives me hope. The biggest complaint I have is how Boxee has assumed that Internet-based content should take priority over local content - so much so that you have to go into the Files menu to see any of your photos, music, or videos. When you select Movies, all you'll see are online videos. Despite this, I've opted to not return it to Best Buy.

Is it weird to buy a product in the hopes that it will get better via software updates? Yeah, a little. When I think about what the Boxee Box represents though, I feel like it's an investment in a product that I want to see succeed. Every other mainstream product with a great UI has ignored the one file type I need: ISO files. I know I'll never see Microsoft support ISO playback on my Xbox 360 because they're looking for people to buy their movies from Zune Marketplace. The Boxee Box is the best solution I have to be able to watch my DVDs, disc-free - and I'm hoping it will get better over time.