Boxee Box Anticipation Thread - Page 3

We can be almost certain that it will not do DTS-MA pass through, although core DTS extraction is almost a certainty.

If the hardware supports it, then I would expect pass through of Dolby True as this is already working in the XBMC base loads they forked from.

It will support DVD ISO (unless they intentionally break it) but it will not support BD ISO unless they are able to put something together in the next couple of months, from scratch.

There are two ways of looking at this, from the Boxee perspective;

1. They want to make everyone happy, so they will work their asses off to put all of these more esoteric features in (BD ISO support, lossless audio, etc) to appeal to the uber geek crowd... (and there was much rejoicing).

2. They will want to make this as solid of an offering at launch as possible and are trying to appeal to a broader audience (college kids and tech savvy adults) who will primarily want something similar to a Roku, that will let them watch Youtube, Netflix, Boxee, on their big screen. For these folks it is hard to say how big of a deal breaker some of these missing features will be.

One thing I know for sure is that the subset group of video geeks who want (insist!) on ISO and lossless support is a tiny fraction of the people that would be in the market for a device like this. Western Digital is selling a crap load of players when it has a stinky GUI, can barely play high bitrate content over SMB, etc, because it has netflix and does DVD ISO... which at the end of the day is enough for 'most people'.

I hope we are pleasantly surprised and Boxee delivers us an incredible product that does everything that everyone wants. Of course even if that happens people will complain about the form factor, the color of the box, lack of onboard IR, etc.

You can't please everyone.

We don't know what the retail price will be, although a couple of sources have hinted at $179 which means it would probably be available on sale for less, like $149.

I'm glad to be vindicated on my prediction that the hardware would be more than capable of going far above the 10mbps ceiling.

The point about HD audio and BD ISO are certainly valid though. It still looks damn cool... if cheap enough I would not mind getting one as a secondary player on my main TV and maybe good enough for bedrooms and the like.

Also, consider this. The first look interface of the Boxee looks far better than Popbox, and Boxee is still in beta for another 90 days before it is released. Plenty of time to polish it even further, add support for more video formats and the like.

The included remote is RF. The article mentions support for USB IR dongles.

I rather doubt this will be possible at least initially.

I had some movies not picked up either, they get put into an 'unidentified' section. When you go into that section you can then rename them, search and get them properly identified.

Go into the main Boxee menu and then go Files->Unresolved Videos. Your stuff that scanned but was unidentified should show up in there.

I don't believe that Boxee is currently using local .nfo files or artwork. This is obviously a major loss and I hope that they realize this and get support added by the time it is released.

However, it's worth noting that even in Beta form, Boxee blows the Popbox and other similar products out of the water from a UI/integration standpoint.

I see two classes of device emerging over the next year. Devices like Boxee, AppleTV and Google that have limited home media capabilities and lack HD audio playback. These will become the mainstream devices and people who want to watch their own content will conform more or less to those limitations (ripping without lossless audio, not using BD ISO format, etc).

The 2nd category of device will be for the hard core HT enthusiast and will be completely dominated by HDI Dune player and the likes. Perhaps another year after that we will see these device capabilities merge into a single STB that gives us everything we crave.

You probably need to do a rescan of the media. All of my unidentified videos showed up in 'unresolved'. Then you just select the item, click the little button that says 'identify video' type the name in and select from the list. It works wonderfully.

I wouldn't even put Popbox in the same category as Boxee or any other real media player that is actually trying to bridge the gap. Popbox is simply a joke and clearly demonstrates Syabas vulnerability. They are looking more like a company that did well with release of original PCH and have since been making one mis-step after another.

Look at how boxee runs in demo videos or on your own machine, how it can easily identify missing video, plays flash, brings in netflix, etc, all painlessly and this is with the beta from six months ago. The release software should be substantially better, and I think, better enough that some users will seriously reconsider that they 'must' have BD ISO and lossless audio to be happy.