abehost
November 13th, 2010, 04:35 PM
Ok, Let me start off with saying that with all new projects/products (iphone, various operating systems, etc) they can't be expected to work 100% perfectly the ways everyone wants them on the first day. Good products take a bit of time to grow into their skin and I admire boxee and dlink for getting the product out so the makers could really hear the problems and things people want, then updates can be made to take care of these things. Boxee Box v1 is an amazing start.
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My experience:
I've owned two hacked western digital live plus (WDTVLIVE+) for a while now and I had them both hacked to run wdlxtv (amazing software from brad that really made the device truely remarkable and customizable). I enjoyed being able to telnet into them over my local network and make changes as well as providing high quality msheets and artwork when selecting the movies or tv shows. This process was VERY time consuming. With hundreds of mkv movies in a collection, making all the msheets became a pain that I didn't have time for. The wdtvlive+ is great device and I'm glad so much additional development has gone into it.
I owned an apple tv before that which I had boxee installed on. Great software then.
The Boxee Box:
Its bigger that the wdtvlive+ but its cool looking and its a welcome addition to my entrainment center, it looks good. I have no problems with sound or overheating yet so I'm happy about that. Setup was quick and easy. It connected to the network on the first try and updated itself and rebooted. No problems here. I'm quite happy with the boxee GUI, it looks very impressive on my massive tv. OOOO AHHHH, especially with hundreds of my HD movies to select from. The remote is the perfect size and keyboard is plenty big for me. I like it more than wdtvlive+ remote for sure. Once the webserver was activated in the settings, I was easily able to drag and drop files from my mac onto the locally attached hard drives connected to the boxee box (yes read/write over the network which seemed to a be a problem for some other people, I have no idea what they are talking about, I have full read/write from snow leopard as well as windows 7, it worked for me without any addtional steps). The box easy connected to all the shares on my network (both osx and win7 computers, all shares are there and work fine). As far as playback, I have yet to find a movie in my collection that hasn't played, they all have worked.
My problems/things dlink/boxee need to work on:
1) The artwork process is very slow, wish there was a faster automated process for collection movie/tv show artwork. Come on people, its 2010, I should be able to load artwork for hundred of movies and tv shows in under 10 minutes. Get this fixed, I will be happier.
2) I have a very reliable internet connection at home and haven't had any problems for months. The couple days I've had the boxee box installed on my network...my internet seems to be dropping a couple times a day for some reason. I cannot tell if its the boxee box causes internet problems or its my isp and just a coincident. who knows but if anyone else has this problem let me know. Maybe we can put our heads together and figure this out.
As for the wdtvlive, I plan on putting a wdtvlive+ in one bedroom and the other wdtvlive+ in another bedroom. The boxee will stay in my living room/entertainment center where I watch a majority of my movies and tv shows.
To sum up: for all those people having problems, you cannot expect everything to work out of the box (which it did for me for some reason) because everyone has different types of network and setups that may cause various problems, its not as easy as you think. If you have problems, then work as a group to get it resolved or hacked to your liking or make it known to boxee. Don't just rant and be an idiot, the boxee box is a good VERSION 1 product that I'm happy with even though it needs a few tweeks...(quickly please dlink/boxee, people are threatening to return their box).
KEEP IN MIND: I only use the boxee box for LOCAL PLAYBACK OF FILES. I don't care about netflix or any of that online streaming crap. LOCAL ONLY USER!
-------
My experience:
I've owned two hacked western digital live plus (WDTVLIVE+) for a while now and I had them both hacked to run wdlxtv (amazing software from brad that really made the device truely remarkable and customizable). I enjoyed being able to telnet into them over my local network and make changes as well as providing high quality msheets and artwork when selecting the movies or tv shows. This process was VERY time consuming. With hundreds of mkv movies in a collection, making all the msheets became a pain that I didn't have time for. The wdtvlive+ is great device and I'm glad so much additional development has gone into it.
I owned an apple tv before that which I had boxee installed on. Great software then.
The Boxee Box:
Its bigger that the wdtvlive+ but its cool looking and its a welcome addition to my entrainment center, it looks good. I have no problems with sound or overheating yet so I'm happy about that. Setup was quick and easy. It connected to the network on the first try and updated itself and rebooted. No problems here. I'm quite happy with the boxee GUI, it looks very impressive on my massive tv. OOOO AHHHH, especially with hundreds of my HD movies to select from. The remote is the perfect size and keyboard is plenty big for me. I like it more than wdtvlive+ remote for sure. Once the webserver was activated in the settings, I was easily able to drag and drop files from my mac onto the locally attached hard drives connected to the boxee box (yes read/write over the network which seemed to a be a problem for some other people, I have no idea what they are talking about, I have full read/write from snow leopard as well as windows 7, it worked for me without any addtional steps). The box easy connected to all the shares on my network (both osx and win7 computers, all shares are there and work fine). As far as playback, I have yet to find a movie in my collection that hasn't played, they all have worked.
My problems/things dlink/boxee need to work on:
1) The artwork process is very slow, wish there was a faster automated process for collection movie/tv show artwork. Come on people, its 2010, I should be able to load artwork for hundred of movies and tv shows in under 10 minutes. Get this fixed, I will be happier.
2) I have a very reliable internet connection at home and haven't had any problems for months. The couple days I've had the boxee box installed on my network...my internet seems to be dropping a couple times a day for some reason. I cannot tell if its the boxee box causes internet problems or its my isp and just a coincident. who knows but if anyone else has this problem let me know. Maybe we can put our heads together and figure this out.
As for the wdtvlive, I plan on putting a wdtvlive+ in one bedroom and the other wdtvlive+ in another bedroom. The boxee will stay in my living room/entertainment center where I watch a majority of my movies and tv shows.
To sum up: for all those people having problems, you cannot expect everything to work out of the box (which it did for me for some reason) because everyone has different types of network and setups that may cause various problems, its not as easy as you think. If you have problems, then work as a group to get it resolved or hacked to your liking or make it known to boxee. Don't just rant and be an idiot, the boxee box is a good VERSION 1 product that I'm happy with even though it needs a few tweeks...(quickly please dlink/boxee, people are threatening to return their box).
KEEP IN MIND: I only use the boxee box for LOCAL PLAYBACK OF FILES. I don't care about netflix or any of that online streaming crap. LOCAL ONLY USER!