Boxee Box Anticipation Thread - Page 51

I read a relatively recent review that stated that it has a "flush" power button on top, or something to that effect. Can't remember who did the review.

right ...




Why would it have to be confirmed? Are you assuming you need to unplug/plug it in to work?

Just messing around. But since there is no way to turn it on/off via remote, there logically has to be a hard button on the unit itself.

Eli,

+1 for local moviename.nfo and folder.jpg support

One additional request: for coverart, please include support for folder.PNG image files as well. Many folks -- including myself -- use a program called Starkcovers that adds beautiful "case art" to our cover images. It saves the coverart in the .PNG image format that is compatible with many of the players out there.

Eli-
Thank you again for being active on these boards. Having someone from the developer not only being openly active in discussing concerns, but also actually addressing them, is a serious plus for the Boxee team. The people on these boards are a hard bunch to please and being active with criticisms and requested features is going to go a long with all of us in the long run. I would be hard pressed to find a developer from Netgear on these boards actively working to please everyone. So, I just wanted to throw another thank you to you for doing this for all of us.

I too would like to throw in support for local caching of data. The average movie.nfo and folder.jpg are what I think most of us are looking for.

Obviously this would be a later addition, but could I throw in a request for fanart.jpg support? fanart.jpg is an extra image file in each movie's folder that adds a background on each movie as you view the information. This is one of the features the new Netgear box is supporting. Here's an example:

Or "backdrop.jpg", "backdrop1.jpg", "backdrop2.jpg", etc, for fanart that fades/transitions...

Mediabrowser and XBMC are the best systems to mimic.

The Popbox strategy was to essentially remain mum on the subject. I saw threads of customer surprised when they finally received their boxes and no Netflix. Boxes on the market of lesser renowned compared the the much anticipated Boxee Box (much anticipated primarily fueled by spiffy marketing promising a remarkable feature set) have Netflix. Will Boxee Box be a quasi Popbox with respect to Netflix?

Mind explaining where you are getting this information from?

And for that matter ... what IR remote?

That's fine then. Not having that option would have been a negative. I assume the fan then turns off ....

philip

One that you would buy from a 3rd party. There is a list somewhere of ir receivers that would work. I assume it would be something like an MCE type setup. Both the RF and IR remotes are active (when present).

philip

That still doesn't answer the question about using RF to turn it on/off. Has that been confirmed?

I was aware of it having an IR input, but the idea that it works differently is what's confusing me. Seems like an really odd design choice. Regardless, I'll be happy if the RF remote actually does turn it on/off.

I thought he meant using an x10 or something to actually kill the power. What is the boot time on the boxee?

I believe that was a different poster, talking about using IR to X10. That does beg the question though ... would that even work? When you cut the power to a PC, it doesn't automatically boot upon receiving voltage. It's not clear whether Boxee will act like a CE device or a PC in this case,


As for boot times, I'd love to know as well. Hopefully it ain't too bad.

Since the boxee box will have bd-iso support without menus at the moment will it have a simple menu like the popcorn hour a-200 has where I can still access extras or will it only play the main movie? I also really hope there will be a workaround for tv show scraping because imdb is pretty bad at tv shows the thetvdb is definitly better.

You'd have to double check, but I believe Eli stated it will do both. You can click on it to execute the largest file, or enter the structure to run individual files?


I expect this sort of thing to be a work in progress for quite a while

thanks for the info, after playing around with the pc software for awhile I noticed a couple annoying flaws related to the movie details and that being there are no actor lists under the movie details for local content and no movie trailers but when you add them to the queue they appear. I already mentioned it in the boxee forum just though i'd let eli know this also.

Boxee uses thetvdb for scraping television shows. Just make sure the file's name is in the right format, such as Friends.S01E12.mpg.

Are you sure cause I asked them about that on boxee forum and they said they only use imdb due to liscense issues. heres the thread http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.ph...hlight=thetvdb

Another vote for this to be added

Assuming they do get Netflix, I find native resolution even more important now that the PS3 lost the capability (the disc version had native output, but the new app is fixed res).

The only Netflix player with native output at this point is TiVo. :\\

When naming my son's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes, if I used info off IMDB it was always the wrong episode. An example is Mickey's Treat, which is listed as season 1 episode 15 on IMDB. When I named the episode Mickey.Mouse.Clubhouse.S01E15.m4v, Boxee would scrape it as Daisy In The Sky. Almost every episode was wrong. So after some digging I think I found a post somewhere that mentioned Boxee used thetvdb (don't remember where I read that). So I renamed it Mickey.Mouse.Clubhouse.S01E18.m4v which is how it was listed on thetvdb and it was correct. IMDB lists the season 1 episode 18 as Mickey Saves Santa, which is wrong.

So as I name my television episodes, I've been using thetvdb instead of IMDB and haven't had one wrong yet. Not sure why it works but it does. I wonder if it's the version of Boxee I use on my Mac that is causing this...

Thats interesting but I have some cartoons like the pink panther from the dvd box set and the silly symthonies shorts and boxee always uses the imdb one for the pink panther from 1997 and cant even find the silly symthonies. But xbmc scraps them correctly. I guess its a hit or miss thing with thetvdb and boxee maybe if they add nfo support that will fix this.

IMDB is horrible IMO for TV Shows (you can see an example of this with Popbox). TVDB is easily the way to go, please look to implement this Eli if tvdb is not used already

Just got directed to this thread by someone from the boxee forums of all places. :-P There were a few of us discussing it over there but I didn't realize how huge the support was for this feature. Really glad to see Eli here listening to the concerns of those that really want the boxee box but are waiting on this one feature before jumping on board.

I currently have a WDTV Live and though it has a really ugly interface and no imdb scraping, I like that my collection of movies and tv shows are EXACTLY the way I want them to look.

All my movie folders are organized like this...
Movies/DVD/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.iso
Movies/DVD/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.jpg
Movies/DVD/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.nfo

Movies/HD/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.mkv
Movies/HD/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.jpg
Movies/HD/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.nfo

Movies/Divx-Xvid/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.avi
Movies/Divx-Xvid/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.jpg
Movies/Divx-Xvid/Movie name (Year)/Full.File.Name.nfo

The ideal for me would be to use the jpg that exists with the same name as the movie file for the thumbnail image and either a) keep the folder structure in tact or, b) use the name of the folder for the movie name itself. It would also be nice to somehow organize the the movies by quality (DVD/HD/divx/etc) but thats not going to make it or break it for me.

My TV shows are probably organized similar to most people....

Tv Shows/Show Name/Season 1/Blah.Blah.Blah.Episode1.mkv
Tv Shows/Show Name/Season 1/Blah.Blah.Blah.Episode2.mkv
.......
Tv Shows/Show Name/Season 1/folder.jpg
Tv Shows/Show Name/folder.jpg

For these TV shows, the Season folder uses the folder.jpg as the icon.

I also have other types of video files like exercise videos that are organized similar to TV shows (with the folder icon being folder.jpg) and would definitely want to keep these in a separate folder than movies and tv shows.

For the good of the community, I could live with changing each .nfo file to include some

Please please please encourage boxee to implement these key features very soon! If I can organize my huge collection of movies and tv shows in a way that doesn't suck, I'll be buying on day one and encouraging everyone i know to buy one as well.

just wanted to add an additional note... I read the XML style nfo files that are used for XBMC and it looks REALLY good! I love how you can create a "set" for a trilogy while still keeping in tact the real name of the movie. I didn't see any way to organize videos like exercise videos though. Anyone know how this works on XBMC? I wouldn't want to combine that with movies or tv shows. I also keep Documentaries and short video clips separate as well.

The other 199$ player NeoTV550 is coming out only in early Dec. But they have a solid beta testing going on with testers reporting the maturity in the avs threads.

Anything similar ongoing for Boxee Box ? Is there a closed beta happening with participants under NDA ?

interesting. I hadn't heard of that 'til now. At first glance at the specs, it looks pretty impressive, but definitely seems to be missing a few things. No wifi, no remote qwerty keyboard (which I really like about the boxee), and I haven't seen a single screenshot of the interface. Did they develop their own interface from scratch?

Eli,
1. How long does a cold boot take? (plug in, turn on. Not from standby)
2. Can I turn unit off with remote? (not standby but low to zero watt type of off)
3. Can I turn unit on with remote? (not from standby but from low to zero watt type of off)
4. When you plug the unit in does it automatically power on and boot? Or do I need to push something physically on BB?
5. Would there be any ill effects to pull the plug on boxee? Would putting in standby first help? I'm wondering if using X10 power switch is possible or advisable

Thanks