Portable Boxee?

**boxmenow** · January 13th, 2010, 10:03 PM

After seeing Boxee all around the internet lately I decided to go head and install it. I was under the assumption that it would keep everything (covers, info, etc) in its own folder, so it would be portable. I made the Boxee installation folder set to my external drive and loaded it up. It worked fine and started getting covers for all my movies right out of the box, which was awesome. When I came home I plugged my external back into my desktop and Boxee works, but doesnt show anything that it showed before. My question is, why doesn't Boxee show the information it collects on a different computer? Also, will it show info without an internet connection?

Details :

Installed the current build right from the site, --Boxee Beta 0.9.20.10261 for Microsoft Windows (x86 32bit only) XP, Vista, 7-- onto my 250 GB external hard drive using my Windows 7 64-bit laptop. It worked fine and had no issues installing or running though the site says its 32-bit only.

Upon connecting my external back into my desktop, (XP SP3) it no longer shows everything it collected the first time and wants to re-scan.

**NomadDNA** · January 13th, 2010, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by boxmenow

After seeing Boxee all around the internet lately I decided to go head and install it. I was under the assumption that it would keep everything (covers, info, etc) in its own folder, so it would be portable. I made the Boxee installation folder set to my external drive and loaded it up. It worked fine and started getting covers for all my movies right out of the box, which was awesome. When I came home I plugged my external back into my desktop and Boxee works, but doesnt show anything that it showed before. My question is, why doesn't Boxee show the information it collects on a different computer? Also, will it show info without an internet connection?

Details :

Installed the current build right from the site, --Boxee Beta 0.9.20.10261 for Microsoft Windows (x86 32bit only) XP, Vista, 7-- onto my 250 GB external hard drive using my Windows 7 64-bit laptop. It worked fine and had no issues installing or running though the site says its 32-bit only.

Upon connecting my external back into my desktop, (XP SP3) it no longer shows everything it collected the first time and wants to re-scan.

Nice thought... but It doesn't quite work that way...

Boxee downloads "metadata" into a file external from what you'll find in your Program Files.

This file, known as your "UserData folder" is stored in your Application Support file. For more details, see "b" in my signature below.

**boxmenow** · January 13th, 2010, 10:16 PM

Found it on my desktop, (C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\BOXEE)

Doesn't that defeat the purpose? If his is a free cross-platform app, why would it leave something on the computer behind? IMHO this is meant to be portable. So you can plug it in your mom's computer or your friend HTPC

**NomadDNA** · January 13th, 2010, 10:21 PM

Originally Posted by boxmenow

Found it on my desktop, (C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\BOXEE)

Doesn't that defeat the purpose? If his is a free cross-platform app, why would it leave something on the computer behind? IMHO this is meant to be portable. So you can plug it in your mom's computer or your friend HTPC

Does it? I don't think Boxee advertised itself as being a portable app.

Anyway, what would a portable user do when Boxee tries to find a movie that was on a former computer, and not on a latter? Everyone's media library is different, which makes it difficult to "portableize" Boxee.

Fortunately, Boxee is a multi-platform program, so, were you willing, you could download all the platform versions onto your thumbdrive and install it on your mother's or friend's HTPC.

**boxmenow** · January 13th, 2010, 10:25 PM

"Anyway, what would a portable user do when Boxee tries to find a movie that was on a former computer, and not on a latter? Everyone's media library is different, which makes it difficult to "portableize" Boxee."

^ Very true. I was just confused why in my case, all the media is on the external drive and Boxee is installed and set up to look in those folders, on the external drive.

Also, thanks for the amazingly fast response. I don't any forum I have ever been on has given me a response that quickly.

**DPK** · January 13th, 2010, 10:26 PM

Originally Posted by boxmenow

IMHO this is meant to be portable. So you can plug it in your mom's computer or your friend HTPC

No, no it's not meant to be portable in that sense. It's not "plug and play" software. You install it as a client on a machine and it indexes media on your network.

**darcilicious** · January 13th, 2010, 10:30 PM

IMHO this is meant to be portable.

No, not so much. Cross-platform just means that you can install and run it on multiple operating systems. It doesn't mean it will preserve / manage your settings from system to system.

**liquor** · March 28th, 2010, 09:34 PM

An option to have the settings/userdata stored in boxees program folder would be very useful like with XBMC (-p option)...

**pahtz** · March 29th, 2010, 02:43 AM

A similar issue is if you have Boxee installed on multiple machines but use a portable HD it has to scan the media all over again for each machine.

So a while ago I put the suggestion for a portable database up for voting, but nobody voted for it.

http://getsatisfaction.com/boxee/top...abase_portable

**liquor** · March 29th, 2010, 10:24 AM

Originally Posted by pahtz

A similar issue is if you have Boxee installed on multiple machines but use a portable HD it has to scan the media all over again for each machine.

So a while ago I put the suggestion for a portable database up for voting, but nobody voted for it.

http://getsatisfaction.com/boxee/top...abase_portable

Yes that can be an issue but when using Boxee on a single PC with multiple accounts it would be useful to have the option to share a single user profile...