For the people who thought there were some Boxee devs working on Apple TV support

[erikkri]

This should end the "they are working on it", "it will be released soon" etc comments.

One thing that remains not addressed is AppleTV support for our Beta. Unfortunately, as AppleTV support was not created by us, we have no control or insight when, if ever, it will be fixed.

From:

http://blog.boxee.tv/2010/02/17/28-d...he-boxee-beta/

[sfmatt]

this is honestly a surprise. the worst kind.

three weeks ago (and in the weeks since) we've gotten consistent assurances from boxee on these boards that an "official" ATV release was near, and that we should sit tight. from today's release, i have to suspect that not only is an official ATV beta release not close, but that boxee isn't even working on it anymore.

does anyone at boxee have further insight? is an official ATV beta is the cards? or has boxee left us hanging? what's the party line...?

thx.

[danGIMP]

I'm sure a lot of us are disappointed.

It's understandable that there are significant technical challenges of supporting the atv, a platform with extremely limited systems resources (cpu, mem) that is approaching end-of-life. Most ATV users understand this. However, it didn't seem that anyone from the boxee-team did anything to discourage the the whole "it's coming, it's coming, it's coming to the atv" hype for the last couple months.

[hfisher999]

I love Boxee, I have been using it since it was available on ATV. I also use it on my Mac. I also love my AppleTV and love the quality and ease of use to rent movies. I have learned to hack and code my ATV so I can have Boxee on my HDTV...as long as this option doesn't go away I would be satisfied. As a marketer, I see ATV and the Boxee box as direct competitors and even though I would love a bug free version of Boxee for my AppleTV, I guess I can understand how Boxee wouldn't want current users of ATV to eat into new Boxee sales.

A suggetion would be for Boxee to commission people like Jim or Keith to make the ATV version even better...I am not ready to give up my ATV AND really love my Boxee

Not a pretty problem to have!!!!!

[elforesto]

I bought an Apple TV just because I could get Boxee on it. In the early days, it was pretty neat. I used to watch Hulu on it all the time. Then Hulu broke and I started trying to use the local media features instead.

I say trying because it would never properly index my media and I could never figure out how to force it to do so. Boxee would also randomly disconnect connections to my network shares on my desktop with no warning; I only knew it had happened because all of my local media disappeared from the browser. It also ended up running very, very slow and had a significant number of media playback issues that I could reproduce with other Patchstick apps. This includes XMBC off which Boxee is (allegedly) based, so I was extra confused about the playback issues.

I also couldn't ever find out what content was available on the various channels they created. There's no indexing across sites for easy searching, no recommendations, and I was never able to get the various Hulu workarounds to do anything but put a non-functional icon in my menus.

Just for kicks, I tried out Boxee on my desktop when the beta came out. Unfortunately, not much has changed. It was slower than on my ATV despite the significantly better hardware, it still didn't index local media properly, and it crashed more than the alpha. That was the final straw. Boxee has a lot of hype and promise, but for me, it just doesn't deliver.

So, basically, Boxee sucks for local media, the streaming media selection is highly disorganized and disjointed, AND they've basically flipped the bird at one of the most enthusiastic groups of early adopters by making Apple TV a red-headed step-child. Eff them. I'm sticking with XBMC until they can get their crap together.

[ExMod]

I got the stupid atv so I could run Boxee, and while it isn't going to break any land speed records, it's worked for me. Which makes me unhappy that now I won't upgrade to beta. Sure, I can run the scripts, etc., but why go through all the hassle when I can just use XBMC instead. Boxee obviously has given up on this platform. Not a ton of support to begin with anyway, but none is a little less support than I'm willing to go with.

And now we know that all those posts from this thread that claimed the atv Boxee beta was just a week away were mere puffery. That part is the worst, I've been waiting for the beta on atv, because I believed it would come, was actually pretty excited when the beta was announced. Then, no atv at launch; then vague promises of atv beta at some future date, just around the corner; Now: "Unfortunately, as AppleTV support was not created by us, we have no control or insight when, if ever, it will be fixed." I'm pretty sure that at least some atv owners are installing beta (isn't there a sticky about it?). Boxee's disingenuousness and failure to come through on promises has me quoting Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_1992, "I'm not disappointed, I'm angry."

I can't really see why I would choose Boxee over XBMC on the atv, since XBMC handles playback better, it's extensible, it uses thetvdb and themoviedb's, and it continues to be supported by an open source community.

Unless someone else has a good reason to undertake the hassle of hacking the device and then installing unsupported software, I'm pretty much done with Boxee on the atv. Are there any good reasons? And why should I get the Boxee box, if there is some kind of falling out with the hardware partners, isn't that going to get the shaft as well?

[dooge]

To be honest, i'm not entirely surprised by this. I mean, they release their own bigger, better, cubier version of a tv top box and continue to support appletv? That would be money not going into their pockets right there.

I probably will be one of those people who end up saving up for the boxee box but it's a bit of a shame to be mis-lead...

[NomadDNA]

I recommend users to visit and read the replies to Avner's blog post
http://blog.boxee.tv/2010/02/17/28-d...he-boxee-beta/

Specifically, the post cited here:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showpost.php?p=87352&postcount=16

I'm under the impression Boxee has been paid by D-link a royalty to use its software, which is not contingent whether or not it supports other devices. Keep in mind boxee has intentions to distribute it's software to other hardware manufacturers, and not just D-Link. Thus, producing software for ATV does not pose a direct threat to boxee's profitability.

[marcel]

guys i believe this thread sums it up better than i could http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=15297&page=2

if anyone one has any issues troubles with installing the beta version with these three lines below then please contact me at marcel{at}boxee{dot}tv and will help each one of you ..

wget -m -nd http://www.green-light.ca/cmn_extern...stallScript.sh

sudo sh BoxeeBetaInstallScript.sh latest

sudo reboot now

[jeffcox65]

I followed the steps in the above post and it seems to have worked so far. Right now it's indexing my local files so I'm waiting, but if there are any problems I'll post 'em here.

Nice work! Thanks for the link to the concise explanation of ATV vs. Boxee and the installation script.

- Jeff