My opinion of Boxee and why it is going to be returned

[Tony Davenport]

As an early adopter I thought I would list some of things that lead me to be less than satisfied with my purchase. (In fact I wrote this a little while ago, and have now decided to return both my Boxee Boxes and go for a Foxconn NT330i, which boots XBMC Live from a USB stick)

1. I was encouraged, by the website, to download the beta of the software to experience what the Boxee box would give me. I did so, and very much liked the user interface. However upon setting up the Boxee box this was not what I got. The tasteful typography is gone and replaced with a fairly hideous font rendering and a drab grey look.

2. “Featured". The Boxee box fails on its very first screen. Half of it is dominated by “featured" videos. Not only is this a poor use of screen space (bearing in mind that the Boxee box is pretty much destined for HDTV and “featured" only shows three videos) but it is completely irrelevant to most users. With the great integration of Boxee, Twitter and Facebook, why would I want to look at what someone at Boxee HQ thinks is interesting? The very nature of mankind is that we are all different, and that is why social networks exist, grouping together people with similar interests. Can you honestly ever say you've watched “featured" videos on most websites like YouTube? This page should be used for more videos, and more relevant videos e.g. videos from my friend's feeds.

3. Movies. I should not be seeing paid movies in the lists of online content, unless I specifically have a subscription to that content. Boxee should have feature to switch this off, particularly as it make such an issue of providing so much “free" content. "Mubi" is a prime example of this.

4. Continuing on from what I said in 2., this box is designed for HDTV. Rather more can be fitted on screen–movie and TV show descriptions should not be cut off for lack of screen real estate.

5. It would be nice to have a somewhat wider beta testing environment, as shown by the recent SP3 problems.

6. Feature should be implemented when they work, having been tested in beta. For example the BBC iPlayer app (presumably provided by Boxee themselves) does not work properly – not only does it not start auto playing a video you have chosen, or go full screen (leaving you to use the painful Boxee mouse emulation), but if you jump to a later point in the program or movie the picture will freeze.

7. Better flash video support. If Boxee can obtain from the website the duration and current position in a Flash video then there is no reason I can see why it could not provide support for jumping to a specific time, or for that matter having a rather more sensible skip time assigned to the left and right buttons.

8. This is a small form factor PC. £199 is not a small price to pay for a media player, but about what one would pay for a small PC. However unlike the PC option I am 'locked out' of doing whatever I want to it. I can't make my own firmware as Boxee requires 'signed' code, i.e. you can't just upload your own Linux build onto it. You can only do what Boxee Team decide you can do. To an extent I understand that - it's the Apple approach to make an effective and usable environment for pretty much any user of any skill level. What I object to is the removal of the Telnet 'hack' which allowed more experienced users to mess around with their own equipment. I have other devices like this - an iPhone and an iPad, but there's a difference. These aren't jailbroken as THEY WORK. They do what I want. Boxee DOESN'T … and I'm afraid I'm not prepared to stand around until it does.

[canuckle]

1. I agree with you on the font and drab colour scheme.

2. I agree with you on the main screen, although I have checked out a few of those videos, it is a huge waste of real estate and would rather have it customized to feature fav apps or shows...whatever. Why should the main screen be what someone else at Boxee thinks you'll like??

3.Agreed, there is a Mubi app. Use it, if you want to watch their movies, but don't integrate it into the movies section. Are they going to do this with Netflix etc when they come onboard. I doubt it.

4. Agreed, I don't quite understand why that is. Or why not have an overlay screen with the movie details. You can see it while the movie is playing if you hit the menu button and then hit the "i" info icon. Kind of defeats the purpose of knowing the details prior to watching.

5. The RC were a great idea, and I hope they continue it.

6. What's strange is when you reverted back to factory default, A lot of the shows that won't go full screen in 1.0, can go full screen in .09...doesn't make sense.

7. I think the flash aspect is tricky, as you have different network sites implementing different types of layouts, code...I'm guessing. I just wish the networks would format all their commercials to 16x9 so it would smoothly integrate with the show viewing performance. Sometimes it messes up the video and you have to screw around with it to get it back to normal. I don't agree with being able to FF through commercials as it costs a lot of money to produce these shows and networks need to pay for those employees. I have no problem waiting for a commercial when I can watch the program whenever I want.

I basically agree with almost everything you said. However the device is still in it's infancy and I'm patient enough to wait it out for feature enhancements. It plays my local stuff great, TV shows are pretty good (Having to drag the mouse over to full screen some shows, is not really a hardship for the convenience to watch it when I want) HTPC is to much overhead and maintenance, and the wife likes the easiness of the Boxee Box. Good luck with your new set up. Looks pretty compact.

[Ozpeter]

The Boxee box fails on its very first screen.

It could be better but I think the word "fail" is a bit of an overstatement. I only see it about once per boot (therefore probably not for days on end). It doesn't stop me from doing any of the things I want to do with the Box. I don't see how the Box can be said to "fail" on this one small aspect.

[ScottAllyn]

I also agree with many of the points made in the first post, tho I don't currently consider any of them to be show stoppers. My own thoughts on a couple points:

2. Yup, the Home screen is next to useless for me, except as a quick jumping point to the other sections. I'd love to see some customization added here, such as the ability to see my top 6 favorite apps and top 6 items in my play queue.

3. I actually like the concept of mixing online content from websites and apps with my own local content for both movies and tv shows but don't like the current implementation at all. We really need the ability to disable the sources that we're not interested in, even if it's buried somewhere in the advanced settings. As a netflix user, I might want netflix movies to show up in my list, but not Hulu or Mubi movies...

5. I think the release candidates are the solution to this, tho I'd like to see an option to allow the box to download and update to the RC firmwares w/o having to go the USB flash drive route.

[chaluga]

It would be nice to control the home screen buts its a pretty minor issue for me. I am curious a couple of weeks from now if u like the new player a lot more

[funk_dat69]

I agree with most of the things you said as well, but, for me, the current version of Boxee succeeds enough on local content that I still like it and plan to keep it.

1)I agree the new look is kind of 'bleh', but whatever, I'm not too picky

2)The homescreen is pretty worthless. I'd like to customize it as well.

3)I don't mind that Boxee gives me more choices when I select a movie or whatever. That's Boxee's job, being an aggregation service. When you select something you have to select the source no matter what anyway, might as well see all the choices. I agree that 'local' should always be first in the list, but having all the other options is helpful. It would be nice for them to be more descriptive if the option is pay content, however.

4)I agree. And what about music?!

5)They obviously have a small team, which is concerning, but they seem to be making progress.

6)True. They need some serious test/release control. Regression bugs should be very rare.

..
I like hacking my hw for sure (have XBMC on an original xbox, added a backlight to my GameBoyAdvance, etc) but I don't really have much desire to bust open the BB. The Boxee sw is good enough at this point.

[Ozpeter]

BTW, it's interesting to put the Amazon reviews in date order then look at the star ratings given - there's a noticable move to 4 or 5 star ratings in the reviews from the last couple of weeks or so. Chief causes of low ratings seem to relate to Netflix or to issues which would appear to be local. But obviously different people have different valid-for-them reasons to be happy / unhappy.

[IzzyDeadyet]

BTW, it's interesting to put the Amazon reviews in date order then look at the star ratings given - there's a noticable move to 4 or 5 star ratings in the reviews from the last couple of weeks or so. Chief causes of low ratings seem to relate to Netflix or to issues which would appear to be local. But obviously different people have different valid-for-them reasons to be happy / unhappy.

I don't see that change at all.

From January 9th to January 28th There are 20 4-5 star reviews and 19 3 star and lower reviews. If you look at the total number of reviews of 338 you'll see that 172 reviews are 4-5 stars and 166 reviews are 3 and lower. The percent is pretty much unchanged.

If you actually take the time to read the reviews rather than just look at the number of stars you'll notice a lot of negative comments on the 4-5 star reviews followed by "but they'll fix that".

[PhatPhreddy]

It could be better but I think the word "fail" is a bit of an overstatement. I only see it about once per boot (therefore probably not for days on end). It doesn't stop me from doing any of the things I want to do with the Box. I don't see how the Box can be said to "fail" on this one small aspect.

Surely the very fact that you dont ever use it, immediately navigate away from it, and only see it once per boot..

Is the absolute proof its a failure ??

[johnke]

1. I was encouraged, by the website, to download the beta of the software to experience what the Boxee box would give me. I did so, and very much liked the user interface. However upon setting up the Boxee box this was not what I got. The tasteful typography is gone and replaced with a fairly hideous font rendering and a drab grey look.

I completely agree. Before buying my Boxee Box, I downloaded the software to run on my Mac. I was impressed with what I saw and placed my order based on that. Now that I've spent a week with my BB, I feel like slightly cheated. This isn't what I wanted. Also, the 1.0 interface is not only uglier and less useful, it's also more buggy (crashing at least twice daily, general slowdown when left running for a while, guaranteed-reproducible crash every time I run the Vice app).

I did a factory restore of the BB back down to 0.9.3 and I'm much happier. No offense to the Boxee developers - you're doing mighty work and I really do appreciate it - but this is what I paid for. Now I just have to stop my BB from updating itself.