ronmichael
June 12th, 2009, 04:10 PM
Like I am sure many of you, I've played a bit with Hulu Desktop. In some ways I find it a bit annoying - browsing videos is hard when you are using a TV that is a few feet away because everything is just too small to see. But it's nice to have controls (pause, rewind, forward, backward) that work as they should. And it's nice to have access to Hulu movies (which we still can't get in Boxee?)
One other thing that used to annoy me about Hulu Desktop was how it'd immediately start playing video when it started up, and how as soon as it finished playing the video you wanted it'd play someting else. But I was thinking last night that that is how a real TV is. You turn it on and something is on; when you are done watching what you wanted something else comes on. After you get used to the idea of not having to browse all over to find something to watch it can be quiet useful for just casual viewing. It's a subtle yet almost brilliant idea that I haven't seen any other media center software attempt yet.
I think Boxee can learn from this. I think Boxee's app should especially learn from this. Require a little less interaction from the user, be more entertaining without demanding so much from the user. Use all the available information to guess what might be of interest to the user and show it to them. Take the Flickr app in Boxee for example. No offense to anyone but I find it to be almost useless. There is no slideshow feature, you have to browse tiny thumbnails and click on them to view the picture. That is not fun or entertaining. What it should do is immediately start showing me images. Give me some options I can get to so that I can control what images it shows and how it shows them once I get bored of the defaults, and so I can log it into my acount so that I can more easily get to my pics and tag stuff and so on.
Likewise the Radio Time app. It should immediately start playing the last radio station I was in. And also go to my presets by default, or put my presets on top of the local station list.
If there are people who don't like the "instant on" idea, make it an option so that it can be turned off. But I think making Boxee ore like traditional devices (TV, radio, etc) will make it more appealing to more users.
And one slightly additional comment: I think the menu structure could use some fine tuning. You click on video and then have to choose Movies, TV or Internet. Movies and TV only include your local content. What about a person like me who has none? I'd actually want/expect to find NetFlix under the Movies section. The Internet menu seems like an artifical and unneccesary distinction for many users. Most media centers I've used make this same mistake. The casual user, the non-technie, doesn't want to think about the distinction between local movies and internet movies. They are the same. In fact the non-techie (and I suspect a growing number of techies) don't want or need to have local movies and TV - they can just stream want they want from the internet.
Well, that's enough of my random musing. I love Boxee. If only it would show me my local music properly (or just interface with iTunes like Plex) I might be able to use it for everyting.
One other thing that used to annoy me about Hulu Desktop was how it'd immediately start playing video when it started up, and how as soon as it finished playing the video you wanted it'd play someting else. But I was thinking last night that that is how a real TV is. You turn it on and something is on; when you are done watching what you wanted something else comes on. After you get used to the idea of not having to browse all over to find something to watch it can be quiet useful for just casual viewing. It's a subtle yet almost brilliant idea that I haven't seen any other media center software attempt yet.
I think Boxee can learn from this. I think Boxee's app should especially learn from this. Require a little less interaction from the user, be more entertaining without demanding so much from the user. Use all the available information to guess what might be of interest to the user and show it to them. Take the Flickr app in Boxee for example. No offense to anyone but I find it to be almost useless. There is no slideshow feature, you have to browse tiny thumbnails and click on them to view the picture. That is not fun or entertaining. What it should do is immediately start showing me images. Give me some options I can get to so that I can control what images it shows and how it shows them once I get bored of the defaults, and so I can log it into my acount so that I can more easily get to my pics and tag stuff and so on.
Likewise the Radio Time app. It should immediately start playing the last radio station I was in. And also go to my presets by default, or put my presets on top of the local station list.
If there are people who don't like the "instant on" idea, make it an option so that it can be turned off. But I think making Boxee ore like traditional devices (TV, radio, etc) will make it more appealing to more users.
And one slightly additional comment: I think the menu structure could use some fine tuning. You click on video and then have to choose Movies, TV or Internet. Movies and TV only include your local content. What about a person like me who has none? I'd actually want/expect to find NetFlix under the Movies section. The Internet menu seems like an artifical and unneccesary distinction for many users. Most media centers I've used make this same mistake. The casual user, the non-technie, doesn't want to think about the distinction between local movies and internet movies. They are the same. In fact the non-techie (and I suspect a growing number of techies) don't want or need to have local movies and TV - they can just stream want they want from the internet.
Well, that's enough of my random musing. I love Boxee. If only it would show me my local music properly (or just interface with iTunes like Plex) I might be able to use it for everyting.