Quote:
Originally Posted by frito /forum/post/19517018
boxee is and has always been the king of local media streaming, at the moment only untouched BD rips are broken over the network but do play fine with attached storage (buffering issues over the wired network)
boxee devs have said they will try to fix the streaming issue but it may be a hardware limitation.
streaming MKV's is no problem for the boxee box and works perfectly right now.
as far as user interfaces go boxee is easily the best out there today and as it grows they will be fixing things and adding features and more online streaming options.
so far we have used a WDTV, ATV with boxee (ATV is underpowered and could not handle it), and a Asus O!Play, the boxee box just replaced the O!Play and we have zero regrets as the majority of our use is local content
Well I have to disagree with you regarding the BBox being the king of local streaming. I have given two BBoxes a week of my time and I generally like XBMC. I brought one BBox back because of an outrageously loud fan. The 2nd one I got was better noise-wise, but it did get louder after a couple of days. Still at a bearable threshold level but it will be returned because there are just too many other issues with the BBox at this time.
- the BBox remote is simply awful when it comes to operating the net part
- local and net content can't be unraveled and slows down the whole unit. I spent more time watching the circles go round and round than anything else. For local playback there are better options. I will say that Boxee on my mid 2010 Mini is far nicer than the Boxee Box and is actually fast. I still prefer XBMC on it however. XBMC on my 1st G ATV with a Crystal HD card is in fact more enjoyable at this point though I admit that this is not something for everyone. This is using a release candidate of Dharma.
- streaming net stuff on the Boxee Box I had felt like I had just downgraded to dialup internet service and streaming local 720p files always resulted in minor stuttering and buffering. Perhaps I had a defective box but I don't think so.
- the GUI is very nice of course but not everyone wants the net and local stuff mixed up. Watched folders are not watched so it is a pain to use the unit in library mode.
- for Canadians the net content is very poor ( not totally Boxee's fault) and what content there is usually opens in a browser and the process of getting it to full-screen is very frustrating. Those expecting Netflix in Canada should not assume it will work. The Netflix app on Boxee on my Mini does not recognize Netflix for Canada.
This player has a lot of potential but at the moment it just doesn't work properly.
Given the pathetic interfaces of most media players it is not saying much that the BB has an excellent GUI relative to those. I personally found it a joy to return to my C200 with Oversight.
Of course, things could change over the next few months but for now there are simply too many negatives ( remote, fan, flaky networking, slow streaming, poor local media capabilities, no sleep mode).
I wanted badly to like the Boxee Box. It just does so many things. Unfortunately it does none of them very well.
philip