Boxee Box Or WD TV Live Hub?

I think I would wait until Boxee fixes remaining playback bugs, does a few more enhancements and brings Netflix.

Hopefully most of that happens in the next four weeks.

I tend to agree also it all depends on what you want out of the player. I for a quick moment thought about the WD Hub, but then I figured I would test out the beta for Boxee, while no where near the 1.0 product, it is a blessing compared to the software interface on WD products, which even with the WD Hub have a basic layout (IMO).


If you want internal storage then your only choice is the HUB for you. WD has a reputation for leaving its cusotmers in the cold and just releasing new hardware instead of fixing the old bugs, but they do have fairly reliable playback. Since Boxee doesnt deal with the hardware aspect, you may get much better support as they are mainly focused on perfecting the software instead of both hardware and software.

Id wait until at least the end of the year where youd have the neo 550, the Boxee and WD hub out and all should be on fairly even ground as far as software updates go.

Agree with everyone, as far as the Boxee Box I would hold off a little longer until they show they can fix all the major bugs without any sort of regressions.

Also, can the OP expand upon exactly what features they are looking for as that may help narrow down the appropriate players.

I was/am in the same boat and ended up trying to the WD Hub. I am pretty impressed, been rock solid so far. Only niggle is that is doesn't have built in wi-fi and i really don't WANT to use the internal storage (would rather stream wirelessly). Spending an additional $50 for a wifi adapter is kinda annoying but not a deal breaker. I also do enjoy netflix support.

I really do think most anyone would be happy with the Hub. Impressive device.

Now that I have the new firmware and got it to talk to my NAS, I am happy with the Hub. Only real issue is it won't play a handful of BD copies still in BDMV folder format, so I have to rip those the mkv.

I too would prefer not to use the internal storage, but am finding it useful as I am running out of space on the file server. It is all backups of media I own, so additional online backups aren't needed.

Can you hear the fan? Would you know if they have gotten around to supporting Netflix in Canada?

Philip

Dang I'm stuck in the same dilemma.

WD TV Live Hub or Boxee Box...Hmm...

I just got a present which turned out to be a WDTV Hub. It is sitting in its box while I try to figure out what to do with my Boxee Box. The fan on the BB is growing on me. I think it is too much to ask for silence and neat and ...

The WD box is very nice. Can anyone here compare the fan noise from a Hub vs whatever?

This is really getting out of hand...

philip

There's no fan on the hub, it's silent

Are you sure? The reviews seem to to mention one. This is the player with the 1TB hard drive. Maybe a silent fan!

philip

I'm currently stuck between these two as a gift for my GF... I have a slew of MKV formatted movies that she would like to watch and I figured buying her one of these would be great so she can play them at her place.

But I'm torn because she would appreciate the online content quite a bit, so the built-in wireless in the Boxee would be great, but unfortunately the room she would be using this in is still cursed by a tube TV and thus no HDMI.

So here are my questions for the WD owners...
How is the compatibility of the WD with MKV files? Any known issues?
What about files with multiple audio tracks?
Any subtitle issues?
Has anyone seen how it behaves with a wireless bridge? Possible to use a WiFi USB dongle?

Here's an image...



http://www.storagereview.com/western..._wdbabz0010bbk

Personally I found it very quiet and I'm rather picky about fan noise. Much quieter than my TiVo Premiere. I'd say quiet enough that from a few feet it's silent.

Thank you. I finally made a decision and returned the Boxee Box ( which did have a fan noise that was borderline acceptable) and will keep the Hub which I guess I am not supposed to know about since it's a Christmas present . It will replace a 1G ATV.

Philip

You could've used the WDTV Live Hub as a NAS and streamed to the Boxee Box... but Yeah, I returned my Boxee Box too...

I have a number of NAS devices so in a way the server part of the Hub is not what appeals. I like the look. The point was that I couldn't keep both and one had to go. There are only so many spots for media players

philip

hi everyone,

I was about to make a topic like this but saw that someone already had made a thread
I really need help here.....and Im not very technical gifted :/
For obvious reasons I want the device im buying to be simple as the main use will be watching mediafiles from a external HDD connected to the USB port.
Hopefully I will enjoy other features as well.....in time.
Easy "plug&play" is the key word......device must also support SRT text files with the video file.
Flawless 720p/1080p mkv files support is most important.
Also does any of the mentioned media streamers support real 3D video playback?
Is a 1.4 HDMI a must for this?
There are so many media streamers out there that its just confusing

Join the club. It's become very confusing. You don't mention Netflix so I assume that's not an issue. Here's probably the safe order from my perspective (staying in the $200 price)

1. WDTV Hub 2. PCH-A210 3. Boxee Box

I have never used 3D so I don't know. All three will satisfy your other requirements. Buy from somewhere that you can return. These things are very subjective.

philip

If you don't plan on storing media on the Hub, I would look at something else. If you do plan on storing media on the Hub, be aware that the read/write speeds are not good and not gigabit despite the advertising. I get 8MB/s from it. I've only been able to get the scraping to work on the WDTV Live Hub on media stored on the internal drive and not my network. In addition, you have to ask it to scrape the data individually for each file. By contrast, I loaded Zappiti for my Dune and it read every file on my server and automatically scraped the data and has a much better media jukebox feature. I'm not familiar with the Boxee Box or PCH-A210 but beware of the WDTV Live Hub's shortcomings. It has played everything I've thrown at it though.

Hmm ... have you tried scraping only from NAS based files? Someone in this thread indicated they could scrape from both internal and network sources. Something seems off with having to scrape one file at a time.

Boxee's scraping is excellent and it does have a very nice GUI . The A210 has NMJ which is still getting better. I actually prefer Oversight on the A210. Does Zappati work on a Mac?

Philip

Personally, I like the WD TV Live. The free ZappoTV app for the iPhone/iPod that lets you control the WD device in addition to giving you access to additional content (i.e. podcasts, content from the mobile device, pictures from various photo sharing sites like Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, etc.). It's easy to favorite a show and get easy access to the content.

You may want to download the free ZappoTV app, which let's you do even more with the WD TV Live device. I would love to hear what device you decided on afterwards.

I was mistaken yesterday, you can get content info for movies stored on a NAS but you do have to do it for each individual movie. As far as I know, it will only scrape from the web though. I don't know how to get it to pull movie data from a local source. The process is to highlight the movie file, click options, then click "get content info", then it will search for metadata, then it will bring up a list of names and you click the correct file, then it will show the movie info and you have to confirm it is correct. I just did it for the 115 movies stored on my NAS last night and it took a while.

I have no idea if Zappiti works on a mac. I think it is only for Dune players though I could be wrong.

I used to have PCH A110 so I really wanna try something else as I had someproblems with it.
But I guess either of the others will do.
Since WDTV had 1TB HDD its tempting to go for that one.....I would asume I could transfer video files from external HDD through USB and into the 1TB HDD?
However I do wonder which one of them has the best hardware and dont get "out of date" quickest.

Well, the Boxee Box has the more cutting edge hardware. It is, I think, the most interesting of the 3 I mentioned. The A210 is probably similar to your previous A110 but with a better interface, etc... If you want something different then you are down to the Boxee or Hub. Hard choice. I am oddly enough back in that same situation. You already have a very good media player ( the A110). The Boxee is more exciting. I guess you should try it, but get it from some place that will accept returns (in case you it's not for you). The WDTV Hub will do what most people want from a media player. It just isn't cutting edge ( from my perspective). You can of course transfer files to the Hub however you want. The Boxee Box does have that fan which is a negative.

philip

Edit: They all get out of date fast.

Thanks.I used to have A110 but not anymore....got broken and it couldnt be fixed so I got my money back.

Do either of these devices mark which media files have been watched? I download new content from, well, don't ask :-), and sometimes I get whole seasons of shows. As we bounce around a watch this content, it would be great if what we watched got marked as watched.

All my content is stored on a Linux server and I use a WDTV Live to watch it. I would happily spend $200 just to get this one feature. Anyone know?

Thanks,

Allan

Boxee does what you describe, but you can't "unwatch" show status currently.

thanks. I was under the impression the boxee only allowed marking of watched status of movies, not TV shows. I guess I'll need to wait and still manage my media in folders.

Thanks