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All posts tagged "boxee"


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Six Products To Help You Disconnect From Tradition Content Providers

Posted by Richard Chao in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 10:20 PM

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/03/1...plus-one-bonus/

"There's more than a few ways to cut the cord. So here we go, the six best devices listed in order of relevance that will help cut your household's dependence on pay TV."

It seems these days most people are looking for ways to cut their monthly expenses. One item that has always been in the bullseye is the cable or satellite bill. While many people consider it, I know I have, few people actually go all the way and pull the trigger. Figuring out how to get the content we're used to consuming without it coming from the traditional provider can be tough. Well, CrunchGear has put together a list of six products that will make the transition easier. Over the air digital TV receiver, Boxee Box, Roku, Tivo, Dell Zino/Mac Mini and your local library. Click the read link to see the rational behind their choices.

I can personally vouch for the Roku box. How about you? Have you used any products from this list? Have you cut the cord yet? Let us know and give us your experiences or other items you'd put in the list.


Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Boxee Boss Says Bye to Boxes for Games

Posted by Todd Klein in "Digital Home News" @ 12:00 PM

http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-st...under-of-boxee/

“Games have been crucial for the adoption of almost every new platform…and I definitely think that games are gonna go to the cloud. So probably this generation of game consuls or the next generation of game consuls is going to be the last one. That’s much is pretty clear. So really the fight is going to be for who owns the CPU at the home. Is it the game consul, or the TV maker, or the Blue Ray maker, or maybe it’s the cable company that puts the home game player in the home. But probably you’ll have one very strong CPU and then you’ll use different screens connecting to that one CPU and the gaming is going to be part of that CPO. So I assume there’s going to be this huge shift in the gaming business towards the cloud.”

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen says that all games in the future will be played in the cloud. In an interview with Jason Calacanis for This Week in Startups, the head of the NYC-based maker of technology that turns your TV screen into an Internet web video system asserted that today’s game platforms will soon be a thing of the past (link here, comment appears around the 20 minute mark). No more wires connecting multiple boxes to your TV, just controllers and what might be called G.O.D.-Games on Demand controlled by one box and a big (Boxee) interface in the cloud.

While I would love to surf for games the way I surf for shows, I think Ronen may have jumped the gun a bit and is talking his own book (what entrepreneur doesn’t?). We have several more revolutions before all of the pieces are ready for a cloud-based gaming platform that integrates broadcast video, DVR, HD game graphics, sound effects, and multiple players on a fully hosted basis. What do you think, are Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo about to lose their gateway into the home at the expense of Comcast? Or should Comcast be looking to acquire a hardware company once it swallows NBC?


Tuesday, January 4, 2011

The Boxee Box Has Some Competition: The Iomega TV

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 12:00 PM

http://www.digitaltrends.com/entert...ee-2tb-storage/

"The second coming of Boxee is here. Though D-Link was first to take the popular home theater PC interface and roll it into a standalone device with the Boxee Box, Iomega will take it own shot at the ultimate media streamer in February with Iomega TV. Despite sharing the same basic software, Iomega TV differentiates itself from D-Link's Boxee Box with a number of design changes designed to make it an up-market offering. Number one: It's the Celine Dion to D-Link's Lady Gaga. Iomega will ditch the love-it-or-leave-it styling of the Boxee Box in favor of a standard black-box design that blend in a little more in most staid home theater setups."

It's been a long time since I was impressed by anything that Iomega has done - I'm frankly baffled as to how/why they're still in business - but this looks like it might be a winner for them. If offers the same Boxee software experience as the D-Link product for an MSRP of $229.99 (no hard drive); $299.99 gets you a 1 TB internal hard drive, while $349.99 gets you 2 TB. I personally don't have the need for local storage on my Boxee Box, but for some people, this might be exactly what they've been waiting for.


Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Betting On Building Your Own Boxee

Posted by Hooch Tan in "Digital Home News" @ 12:00 PM

http://lifehacker.com/5702309/build...-for-your-money

"I received a Boxee review unit to play around with, and I have to say, I really like it. Quite a bit more than our colleagues at Gizmodo, for sure, because I enjoy a lot of the non-mainstream web content, dig the remote and the box's look, and absolutely adore the "Friends" menu that lines up all the videos my Twitter and Facebook contacts linked for easy watching."

The Boxee Box is one of many streaming solutions in a very crowded market. Still, it stands out as one of the best with a slick interface and support for a lot of stuff you can find online. But why buy when you can build? Earn some Geek cred and make your own HTPC from scratch. Well, it is not always that easy, and at $200, the Boxee Box is hard to compete with. A roll-your-own solution does offer flexibility, but it can also mean spending a few more hours to a few more days setting everything up and dealing with potential, though probably unlikely, hardware conflicts. To be honest, while LifeHacker promotes the do it yourself ethos, I can see the huge temptation that buying an already built solution offers. Without any hassles or problems, you can spend your time watching movies, instead of install wizards.


Wednesday, September 29, 2010

I Pre-Ordered a Boxee Box: Have You?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Talk" @ 09:00 AM

http://astore.amazon.com/digitalhom...tail/B0038JE07O

Last week, I placed a pre-order for a Boxee Box (you can too via this handy pre-order link!). Why? Well, I've been watching the network/local media player space evolve over the past few years, and I've yet to implement any of them. I've seen two basic types of devices:

  1. Devices that offer superior technical capabilities in terms of files (ISO rips, etc.) and formats supported (every video codec under the sun), but lack any semblance of true usability, often featuring awful user interface, painful performance, or both. I'd put most of the dedicated network media players in this camp; Popcorn Hour, efforts from Seagate, Western Digital, Asus, etc.
  2. Devices that offer superior user interface and usability, but lack broad technical abilities; they're often limited in terms of file types (no ISO support), codecs, and are very mainstream in their support of content. I'd put Windows Media Center, and anything based on that (Media Center Extenders), in this category along with the Xbox 360, Apple TV, etc.

I've wanted a device that does both, and it looks like the Boxee Box may be the closest I've come so far. I've messed around with several of these devices over the years; I even bought an Acer Aspire Revo and installed XBMC on it in the hopes that I'd finally be able to do what I wanted. It failed. Read more...


Tuesday, February 2, 2010

TiVo? What TiVo? Media Centers Presented for your Consideration

Posted by Hooch Tan in "Digital Home News" @ 03:00 PM

http://lifehacker.com/5462275/which...center-compared

"We focused on three widely available, and generally popular, media centers for our comparison and review. We're certainly aware there are many alternatives out there, as free software or stand-alone hardware boxes, but these are the three media centers that receive ongoing development, and can be installed on the widest number of TV-connected computers."

The whole media center market is becoming very crowded. My main complaint about them though, is that in Canada, our online options are still quite limited, unless you want to go the route of finding stuff that fell out of the back of a bit bucket. As such, I am stuck with media center choices that can record TV signals. The media centers that record are much smaller in selection, and the hardware options provided by my cable or satellite provider is less than stellar. I am actually partial to Windows Media Center, largely because it is easy to set up, use and manage. It was designed with the idiot in mind, and I like not having to pour over details anymore. However, I can see that once I can shrug off the cable/satellite tether, options like XBMC become considerably more attractive. What is everyone using these days and why did you pick it?


Saturday, January 9, 2010

Check Out the Boxee Box Interface - This Thing is Slick

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 01:33 AM

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/...ace-demo-video/

"We're already gone hands-on with the Boxee Box and its sweet QWERTY RF remote, but now that we know there's a dual-core Tegra 2 in there it's time for a little interface demo with founder Avner Ronen."

I got a chance to spend some time with the Boxee interface, and I have to say, it impressed me. For years, I've watched companies crank out some great made-in-Taiwan NAS/media streamer hardware with good codec support and lots of features, shackled by a brain-dead made-in-Taiwan user interface. It's kept me from every purchasing a device - but Boxee has such a great UI that I think I may use this as the main interface to my media...leaving the loud, streaming/codec-crippled Xbox 360 behind. Boxee and D-Link may have hit a home run with this thing - check out the demo over at Engadget.


Thursday, December 31, 2009

Boxee Demo'd

Posted by Chris Gohlke in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 10:00 AM

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2009/12...t=Google+Reader

Pretty cool. This will cover most of what most users want out of a media center PC and at $200 is quite the relative bargain. The one big thing I see missing is Hulu. Also, while I think the design is really cool looking, it is not very practical, I predict an accessory piece that will make this into a cube.


Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Boxee Alpha Comes To Windows

Posted by Hooch Tan in "Digital Home News" @ 01:30 PM

http://lifehacker.com/5301859/boxee...ands-on-windows

"The latest release also introduces a handful of attention-getting web apps like MLB.tv, officially supported and offering full access to baseball games around the country. Others, like Current TV, Digg, some clever Twitter/Tumblr mashups and niche video sources, came from the providers themselves or the just-ended dev challenge."

Boxee has made quite a name for itself, though with my desktop PCs running Windows (I have a couple of Linux servers, and I cannot afford Macs) I've been standing on the sidelines, looking longingly at the media player. Finally, a Windows client has arrived, though it is very much an alpha version. After playing with it for a few hours, I find the interface quite pleasant and more intuitive than Windows Media Center or those which come on media playerback devices like the WD TV. I had no problems immediately accessing content, both locally and on the net, though being in Canada, I did hit a few roadblocks with several applications telling me that I'm not allowed to watch Babylon 5 of Macgyver. The alphaness of the Windows client also shone through in some places with some spawned programs crashing, but overall, its been pretty pleasant experience. I would like to see some more customization options, and some regional presets so that if some applications cannot be accessed from where you are, it does not display them. I can only hope that as more content becomes available online to Canadians that Boxee will dedicate enough resources to add some polish, or I'll have to look towards setting up yet another computer just for media playback!


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