"maybe Boxee isn't for you" (turn off online TV sources)

[80HD]

So after asking how I might go about removing internet streaming from boxee, the answer from up above seems to be "If you don't like it, try something else".

After poking around on the internet, the next similar few programs I found were:

• Plex - no PC support
• Windows media center - No media scraping, so not a chance even if it was free.
• mythTV - I have no need for DVR support and the interface doesn't compare.
• XBMC - This seems decent, but severely lacks ease of use, media organization and sorting.

So here I am again. I completely love the smart organization of TV shows and movies that Boxee offers for local content, BUT, Boxee won't stop adding streaming sources to 'my TV shows" which is entirely frustrating when I have 100+ episodes of a show and think "Oh I haven't seen this episode yet, only to get directed to ABC/comedy central/hulu etc and offered a very low res/bitrate source.

I can easily ignore feeds and everything in the library, but when Boxee "helps" fill in missing stuff in the My shows page, it is completely maddening and would be enough to drive me away except there are no equally viable alternative programs out there.

The only thing it would take to make me 100% happy with Boxee is a simple setting of "streaming sources enable/disable"

After sieving through the XML I've concluded that streaming sources must not be stored with the profile otherwise I'd have just added --- and been on my merry way.

I really like this program and this one degree of freedom is keeping me from enjoying my htpc experience. This one change could be offered as a paid upgrade and I would happily consider normal boxee to simply be a 'free trial'.

[darcilicious]

Windows media center - No media scraping, so not a chance even if it was free.

Take a look at the Media Browser plugin, if that is indeed your only objection.

Re: Boxee, I have no idea if Boxee will eventually have an option to not show online sources but given that aggregating content from multiple sources appears to one of primary goals of Boxee, it wouldn't surprise me if never does.

[darcilicious]

Let me also add:

Plex is supposed to be released on Windows (when? I have no idea).

XBMC has a number of skins; if it lacks the online indexing that you desire but also lacks the sorting and organization that you want, have you a) tried asking for guidance in the XMBC forums and/or b) tried different skins?

[80HD]

There are a great number of plugins available that I haven't looked at yet. My greatest issue with xbmc is that when I add my "assorted media" folder, I need to add repeatedly for every source type (tv show, movie) where it then misses 80% of my content, and identifies roughly 75% of new episodes of tv shows as movies released many decades ago. Basically it's broken and un-presentable without lots of work on my end.

Boxee otoh, correctly labeled and hierarchically categorized <95% of my media within 8 clicks of first installing it. I was and still am totally floored at the efficient genius of this program.

With a lot of tweaking, it might be possible to get xbmc to categorize like boxee does. But then I'd still have to use settle on an interface which has small but significantly bothersome interface design issues that persist across different skins.

The issue I have with Boxee is exemplified by south park. I have only a few seasons, but when I go to "my tv shows" I get a list of all 202 because comedy central is considered a source. I don't mind giving them the ad-impressions, the reason this doesn't work for me though is that is flash simply a broken format on my hardware. I regularly watch 1080p, high bitrate video, but flash has been broken for several updates and Hulu blacklisted the only flash version that was able to play at >7fps.

Basically, I would positively love the ability to be presented with streaming video in 'my library' only, and have indexed local-content in 'my tv shows'. Right now the best solution I have is to disconnect the internet before launching boxee, which is about as ugly as it gets, plus I can't watch the non-flash content I do enjoy (showtime for example).

Are the devs afraid of boxee growing in popularity after being mistaken for a well polished xmbc fork, and having the social features get neglected by new users? For people like myself, burying the option deep in a config file would even work so that there is little chance that mainstream users would be bothered to change it.

(I hope this last bit gets read by somebody in charge)
Please keep in mind I am only writing because I feel that the option the change this behavior in the program would be appreciated by others with a similar dislike of flash video populating the 'my tv shows' area. If I felt alone in this concern, or thought it would affect users who liked how Boxxe currently is, I would just deal with this quietly.

[darcilicious]

You'd probably be better off posting this in the features request section of the site -- do you want me to move this thread there?

[80HD]

If you could move it that would be appreciated. I wasn't awake as I should have been when I started this thread.

Thank you.

[s0ma]

I'd actually like to see this as well. Between the TV shows section, and i'll even stretch it to the home window... it's great for people who like that kind of connectivity and auto-fill. Please make it optional though...

[up2n0g00d]

I completely agree here. This is a great piece of software, and that setting would make it near perfect. I have a Boxee Box preordered, and would love to have control of the indexing. I understand that partners, and/or someone's vision of what the business model should allow, or disallow,have/has great influence here. It really sucks, though, that the consumer always has to take the hit. We end up with a product that is either dumbed down in its firmware to not give you access to certain settings or features, to actually having physical ports that are disabled. I believe a certain CEO touted that you guys don't want to be the gate keeper. If content gets pushed at us that we don't have control of...isn't that kind of being a gatekeeper? This setting is not going to keep me from buying your product because there is currently no better option IMO. I think the request to have cotrol of the indexing...especially in the box (my request,not the original posters), is not unreasonable. Seems like a bit of a callous remark to make to a potential customer, asking/suggesting a setting that gives more control of the products features. I would be willing to bet that the overwhealming majority of us that have our own HQ content take issue with this. Yes, we will still go out and buy your product, because we want the best option/device out there. We only want you to succeed, so we can. I would suggest maybe just a "thank you for the suggestion" to the next fantabulous idea that comes across. Because an incredible product + great word of mouth from the early adopters= a product likely to dominate the market share.

[xmcnuggetx]

I think the best solution here would be a feature request to allow each show to have a setting to index content from local sources, online sources, or both.

[twistybox]

I think the best solution here would be a feature request to allow each show to have a setting to index content from local sources, online sources, or both.

There's the LIBRARY view for online content. Boxee doesn't need to mix online content with local content in the "MY" view.

I hadn't even noticed Boxee did this until I read this thread. I suppose I'd only checked TV shows for which I have all episodes. The most madening aspect of this "feature" is that its content is totally broken in so many ways.

It shows incorrect season numbers, incorrect episode names, duplicate episodes, wrong episode numbers, duplicate numbers, numbers out of order, content which is not allowed to be played in the current region, content that is allowed but simply won't play, etc.

"MY MEDIA" should not hit the network for anything, it should be local files only. If it's out there somewhere on the internet, it's not really "MY MEDIA," now is it?

If there's no way to keep local content separate from online content, this thing os going to be removed from my shopping list completely.

It may be time to start looking at other solutions.

One possible work-around is to block the Boxee Box from accessing the various sites it pulls that media from. For instance, set up your router to restrict Boxee from going out to Hulu, Fox, ABC, etc... Of course I don't know what effect that will have on it nor do I know if it will require a complete wipe of the database to allow re-indexing everything without the extraneous online garbage. I've just taken a peek and specifically, the site that needs to be blocked is cloudfront.net, a site owned by Amazon and registered by their legal department.