Boxee box - 720/1080 x254 mkv playback

[Stizuner]

Hello, i am a long time lover of boxee and have had a few htpc's over the years. the last year or two i have been using an appletv running boxee.

Recently I have started playing higher quality video files and now run into a problem with playback on the appletv (slowed framerate) also it seems like i have to restart the appletv almost daily.

With this i have decided its time to go back to a dedicated HTPC or perhaps invest in a Boxee Box. i have read very mixed reviews, however take them with a grain of salt because as stated i'm a long time lover of boxee.

Please advice if you recommend boxee box or a dedicated htpc.

Also how is the box on wireless streaming say an 8gb 1080p mkv file over wireless N from a dedicated windows home sever.

Finally how is the remote (the best part of using an appletv imo)

Thanks!!!!

[darcilicious]

Also how is the box on wireless streaming say an 8gb 1080p mkv file over wireless N from a dedicated windows home sever.

This will depend on the actual bitrate (not file size) of the video and on your local environment (amount of interference, signal strength, etc); some are able to get 1080p playback over wireless-N while others can not.

Wired is recommended for best / most reliable playback of high-quality video (regardless of the player).

As an example, I was able to get a 55mb/s bitrate file to play fine over wired but even with wireless-N in the same room as the Box, the same file at 42mb/s bitrate started stuttering about halfway through.

As another example, I couldn't get 1080i (15mb/s bit rate max) to play over wireless-G in the same room on my desktop but it works great over wireless-N.

Finally how is the remote

Can't compare to the ATV remote but the worst thing about the Boxee Box remote is no backlighting and the keyboard is impossible to read in low light The directional side is perfectly fine however.

[gynetix]

That's about he size of the 1080p files I'm playing. So ignoring bitrates, yes you'll probably be able to play those smooth as butter.

I can even get 802.11g to play some 1080p goodness but I went wired for the heck of it.

[M1ster_Happy]

I'd say join the party! To be honest everyone has different setups so you will get some people who have successfully streamed 1080p files and some that have issues... and you aren't using particularly large files by the sound of it. Just buy one and try it, if it doesn't fit what you want I would take it back. There is some great people on the forum to help out with any issues and you can be sure the boxee guys are working hard on making it even better.

I thought the 'hard to see' keyboard side of the remote was going to be a big issue for me, but to be honest I find I'm only playing movies in dim light so I only use the directional side, or the numbers which are better anyway. The grey letters do suck but its not a show stopper.

[iMisspell]

Im not a big fan of wireless, so my Box is wired (didnt even try wireless).
My box is only a week and a half old for me, ive tested around 20 movies - mixed 720 and 1080; out of the 20, ive watched 4 or 5 of them to the end and everything has been smooth with great sound.

Have watched 4 movies from netflix and that whent well too.

I dig the remote, but will also add, its hard to see while your typing if the light is not good.

Im coming from a Ubuntu (linux) desktop that was hooked to the TV, i like Bbox better for a few reasons, one of the biggest, its a whole lot quiter then a PC and the video and sound quality is better then the VLC version i had running on my PC.


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[sneakel]

I am running boxee wireless connected via a WRT 54G router (G speedbooster). Even with the G router the Boxee performs excellently.
It boots up under 1 minute and connects easily to my W7 PC's movie shares (wired connection to the Router).
My collection of videofiles mainly consists of MKV's 1080P with a videobitrate of 8000 KB/s - 12000 KB/s. Boxee is connected via HDMI to a Pioneer VSX820D that "hubs" my Xbox, DVDplayer and Boxee to the screen. DTS and DD (ac3) are identified correcly and the sound is perfect.
Note: to optimize the HD wireless experience I switch to a Linksys 4200 (wireless N) soon. Just buy one and start enjoying.

[Kuro.Houou]

The remote is my only problem with Boxee, it should have had a touchpad or one of those nipple things to move the mouse around in addition to a dpad. would make web browsing so much easier. And I would say the iPhone app would be a good alternative but you can't manually select between dpad mode, analog touch pad mode, or keyboard. you have to rely on boxee trying to figure out what is best and it doesnt do a good job at that. Just add a manual mode for selecting whatever type of input screen you want and I would be happy

Other then that, love my BB

[bryan]

Tried to watch my first 1080p file last night and got a lot of buffering. wireless N in a mixed environment though no other traffic was happening.

720p works flawless for me.

[war59312]

Just watched James Bond 007 Casino Royale.

Has an average bit-rate of 49.5 mbps and max of 69.5 mbps. Higher than Avatar. Highest bit-rate movie (a real movie, not just a demo) I have seen.

Played back just fine. Wired of course. This is my max though since bird80.mkv (Google It) stutters. No buffering though.

Using wireless n, the max I could play without stuttering was only 8 mbps. And a good 30 seconds of buffering at the start. Ugh! After 8 mbps it would have to buffer every 30 seconds. At around 12 mpbs it's un watchable..

So only option for me is weird.

And just for kicks.. No "Crowd Run 2160p UHD CRF22 x264" will of course not play. Highest bit-rate video I have ever seen (average of 281 mbps and max of 317 mbps) Crazy!

That's raw video from a 4k camera. And even if BB could play 4k video and at such a high bit-rate you could NOT stream it, since Bb only has a 100 mbps network adapter. You would have to use USB 2.0 which has a max bit-rate of 480 mbps.

[ryanhendrixarts]

i was in the same boat as you with apple tv 2 and blu-ray rips.

i have found it to be substantially easier to spend 30 minutes ripping to mkv (retaining uncompressed/non-converted a/v tracks) than to spend hours to rip and re-encode/compress to apple-friendly format.

my experiences with 1080p blu-ray mkv images (averaging in 25gb per file) is that wireless n (via apple airport extreme) can work (my distance is about 50 feet from pc server to boxee with a few rooms in between), but out of curiosity i ran cat6 through the attic and was very impressed with the increased load time and practically uninterrupted playback/nonexistent buffering. that being said i'd recommend a wired cat6 connection if it's possible. if you're streaming 5-10gb files, you probably won't notice an issue if your wi-fi range is within 50 feet. you're likely to see some buffering here and there streaming a 30-40gb blu-ray rip.

as far as htpc vs boxee goes, i opted for spending money on additional hard drives to add to my current machine rather than buy parts and build a whole new stand-alone pc. there are, however, those whose main computers are laptops or machines with limited storage capacity, so htpc is a more accommodating solution as far as storage capacity goes. (i'm an advertising photographer and have room for 12 3.5" drives in my tower for raid array & photo archiving).

i did notice vudu hdx (1080p) rentals frequently buffer and occasionally even freeze over wifi (again, via apple airport extreme), but have no playback issues when boxee is connected via cat6.

here's my boxee review on amazon for other input:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-...R13KAB073GNIHR