Boxee Box arrived

[bowlieweekender]

Today is Boxee Box day at this house.

Setup was a breeze, I had content filling my 53" plasma right away.

I'd forgotten how small the unit actually is, the remote is even smaller.

The legends on the qwerty are poorly chosen, hard to see unless you have a brightly lit lounge. And the svelte remote lacks an obvious top and bottom, so you have to look and think which end is up before you press a button.

I've only discovered one programming error in my first hour with the unit. The movie preview channel thinks I'm in IT and is giving me movie trailers in Italian which is of course wrong, but still, it is fun seeing The Social Network in Italian.

I thought there was some BBC channels? I've not seen them yet.

The video quality of YouTube is SO much better than the Netcast on my LG Blu-Ray can manage, really a dramatic improvement.

The Pandora bouncing bar chart graphic gets old quickly, is it possible to change it?

I'd like to build a directory of my fav channels, not found out how to do that yet, must be possible.

Fancast has some channels I like and didn't spot on Boxee, like showmethecurry so I hope they continue to add.

I'm happy with the product, looks good, video quality is awesome, can't hear the fan at all. I feel confident it will grow better and better.

Cheers Nigel

[lukad]

It's nice to hear from someone not on their soapbox and instead spending their time enjoying the product :) .

I'm still waiting for Amazon to ship mine ... and I preordered months ago. :(

[bowlieweekender]

I too pre-ordered mine the very morning the pre-order opened up.

Amazon in Arizona shipped it Wednesday on two day Prime. Are you a Prime customer? Maybe that makes a difference.

CineTrailer.tv thinks I'm in Italy.

Cheers Nigel

[judgeschambers]

Yeah, my unit works great given everything I normally play and throw at it. (1080 H264 .mkv, 1080 .mkv, 1080/720 H264 .mp4,720/1080 .wmv, mpeg, and flash)

You will need a mouse to full screen the most Network TV shows (FX, FOX, Fancast, and a few others), some shows do auto full screen.

Outside of that, works good for me. ;)

[dannyboy101010]

Thanks bowlieweekender.

I am sitting here reading through the posts hourly for updates to the many people who have problems. I am not sure whether to purchase from Amazon to allow a good few weeks testing or buying form Walmart on 17th Nov with a nice gift receipt...

I have faith in this product. I believe the dev's will sort the problems out but I also understand the frustration from many with the out of the box issues.

I'm wondering how many owners out there are satisfied with the out the box state. Most forums are only people with issues and you rarely hear from those that are happy asa they're too busy playing with their new gadgets...

I really want this unit just for the streaming of BD ISO's with a little netflix on demand. Not too worried about watching the latest plum on youtube speaking his mind.

Will sit and wait

[judgeschambers]

dannyboy101010,

You bring up a good point. There are some short comings, as you can see. And you usually hear of the issues and not the people who don't have any.

But there are those that may not be using a certain network config or odd file type +subtitle rip or whatever....Like me. And it works just great with how I've got it set up, network and file types.

[Cheddoleum]

You will need a mouse to full screen the most Network TV shows (FX, FOX, Fancast, and a few others), some shows do auto full screen.

It varies from site to site. In many cases I found that the mouse pointer has been prelocated over the fullscreen button on the embedded flash player, in which case you just mash on the center remote button and it fullscreens. In many other cases you can move the mouse pointer over the embedded fullscreen button using the 4-way control and then ditto, though this is not exactly handy.

In some cases the top menu bar that you get when hitting the menu button includes a fullscreen boxee control that works. Haven't found too many of these. Comedy Central is one.

[dannyboy101010]

I really want this thing to work and be successful. I hope they sort it out and will be happy to get playing once it hits the stores....
I can't see anything better on the market at present and not sure I want a dedicated HTPC to mess with. It will only take one time for it not to work and the missus will be give me crap...

This would be the better option for 'missus useability' and I get to view all my lovely content in 1080 on the mitsu...(if it gets sorted)

I'll have to hide it in the drawer until the problems are ironed out and just tell her it's an issue with the flux capacitor or something....

[bowlieweekender]

I should declare a slight interest in its success, I work for Intel and it sports an Intel processor. That aside, I bought it with my money for personal use.

Like a lot of early adopters here I'm sure, I bought into Roku and have a Blu-Ray that serves up Netflix, Pandora and others, but they all have fallen short on something or other, either poor quality video, dire codec support, or having to enter text on a virtual keyboard using up/down left/right buttons, and that's REALLY like pulling teeth. When I saw Boxee at CES in January I liked the approach a lot.

Cheers Nigel

[judgeschambers]

Like I mentioned, the Webkit browser is a work in progress and they are also working on partnerships with some of the channels to help with this. Unfortunately, it's not nailed today, but looks to be sooner vs. later now that things are cooking along. ;)