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. First things first: yes, it ran Hulu in the browser -- but the network connection on the show floor was acting up, so we couldn't demo it very well. Avner tells us the built-in browser IDs itself as essentially standard Mozilla, so we'll have to see if Hulu goes out of its way to block it --it's definitely still possible, but it'll take some work. Apart from that minor drama, we've got to say we're incredibly impressed -- the interface was lightning fast, the remote's keyboard felt great, and we're liking the Facebook / Twitter integration, which mines your feeds for videos posted by your friends and displays them on the home page. Avner tells us he thinks D-Link will be "aggressive" with that under-$200 price point when the Box launches in Q2, and there'll be tons of content partners at launch. Video after the break!
posted January 8th 2010 6:41PM
Here's the thing... I want to like Boxee, but it needs the following before I'll use it:
1) Better HD feeds. Want to watch Netflix in HD? Sorry, not available. Want to watch the YouTube HD videos? Sorry, not in HD. So far, almost all the apps I've tried are all SD, and it has made me very sad. If a HD feed is available, it should use it by default (or at least give me the choice to use the HD feeds by default).
2) You can queue TV Shows, but there is no indication on when they'll expire or whether you've watched them or not. Since I sort my Hulu videos by expiration, I need this feature or some of my queued videos will expire before I get to them. To be honest, Hulu Desktop is the perfect Hulu player - Boxee should just imitate its functionality.
3) Better TV Show searching. I searched for "The Closer" and got nothing. I searched for "The Colbert Report" and also got no results (even though "The Daily Show" was found both on Hulu and Comedy Central). What's up with that??
im loving the qwerty integration on the remote, fairly ingenious
Does anyone else have issues with the boxee beta and mac mini+apple remote? I know that the alpha had issues with the remote under snow leopard but I thought those issues would be fixed in the beta. At the moment the beta doesn't react to my remote at all, but it works just fine in front row.
Looks nice, but, this really appears to be a device that is still in the developmental stage. This is what frustrates me about the whole CES thing. I realize that CES is the venue of introducing new technology, but, it showcases way too many products that are just working designs or with rather limited availability as opposed to what you can really expect to go out and purchase now.
I also saw this unit at CES, here is my short video of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_07oasmLIA4
Thanks,
Fabian.