Boxee Box NAS streaming, and music streaming

[dcook87]

I'm thinking about buying a Boxee box, and I've been looking around for answers to a few questions before I go and actually buy one:

1) If I have a NAS set up on my network with media (movies, TV shows, music) on it, can I set up the Boxee to read these files into the movie/TV show library? Or, do I have to just navigate with a traditional file browser in the hierarchy that my NAS stores them in? In layman's terms..Can I get media on a network share to populate the library with full cover art/description automatically?

and:

2) Can I "send" media to my Boxee (similar to airplay for aTV) to stream it right from my phone or computer to my TV, without having to navigate the boxee menu?

I've been looking around for answers to this but nothing really seemed concrete.

Thanks

[Ronald]

I'm thinking about buying a Boxee box, and I've been looking around for answers to a few questions before I go and actually buy one:

1) If I have a NAS set up on my network with media (movies, TV shows, music) on it, can I set up the Boxee to read these files into the movie/TV show library?

Yes, you can.

The Boxee Box maintains separate library sections for "Shows" and "Movies", and for both of these there are several subcategories. Some of these include various online video sources, but the one named "Files" shows only locally scanned videos. By 'locally scanned' I here mean videos from local folders, either on LAN or on USB drives connected to the box, for either of which you have used the "Add Source" command of Boxee to have that folder (and all its subfolders) scanned for videos which are added to the library after being identified.

Here 'identified' means that they must either match a known video name in the Boxee database (based on IMDB and TVDB), or have an NFO file in the same place as the video to identify the file properly (NFO files allow fully user-defined identity). Where names do not match the database, and you have no NFO file, you can still try to find a matching entry by searching the database 'manually' with a built-in search engine, and choose between alternate identification suggestions it gives you.

Or, do I have to just navigate with a traditional file browser in the hierarchy that my NAS stores them in?

For 'identified' videos that method is optional (it always remains available), so it is only for unidentified content that you have to browse this way.

In layman's terms..Can I get media on a network share to populate the library with full cover art/description automatically?

I wish I could just say "Yes" to this, but it really isn't quite that easy.

You can do it, but you'll probably have to rename a lot of your files to have it work that way, and for some movies/shows you'll probably need to add NFO files as well.

2) Can I "send" media to my Boxee (similar to airplay for aTV) to stream it right from my phone or computer to my TV, without having to navigate the boxee menu?

There has been some talk lately about Boxee APPs with some airplay capabilities, but I can't really say how any of that works, as I use no airplay stuff myself.

Even if such an APP can do it, you would definitely have to navigate the Boxee menu in order to start that APP before using any of its features, so this is probably not the functionality you wanted.

Btw:
I almost forgot to say that the identification method of Boxee is geared mainly to handle Movies and TV shows well. For music it is not nearly as advanced, and I never got it to identify more than a fraction of my MP3 collection. So for music I prefer to navigate my SMB folders 'manually'.

Best regards: Ronald

[drunkwithpower]

Btw:
I almost forgot to say that the identification method of Boxee is geared mainly to handle Movies and TV shows well. For music it is not nearly as advanced, and I never got it to identify more than a fraction of my MP3 collection. So for music I prefer to navigate my SMB folders 'manually'.

Best regards: Ronald

Ronald is right - they need to work on the music identification system badly. I just started using the Boxee Box for music, and it's been really hit or miss whether album art shows up. My main issue is when I have two folders with the same artist - the Boxee identifies the artist and album correctly using the id3 tags, but the main artist folder doesn't get cover art sometimes. I guess their cover art source doesn't have anything available so you get a blank box.

So while browsing the music you may be stuck with a ton of blank boxes, but if you click on them most likely you'll see a list of the albums for that artist and they will all probably have cover art if they have correct id3 tags.

Artist (Blank box - no cover art)
Album 1 (has cover art)
Album 2 (has cover art)

They need to allow us to specify folder.jpg for music cover art as well.

[darcilicious]

2) Can I "send" media to my Boxee (similar to airplay for aTV) to stream it right from my phone or computer to my TV, without having to navigate the boxee menu?

In a word, yes.

Though it will depend on the app on your iOS device (e.g. apps like HBOGo, Hulu, ABC and other tv network video apps do not stream video). YouTube, non-DRM'd videos from the native Videos app, most trailer apps/sources will work fine. Most if not all audio iOS apps work fine.

To use AirPlay from your computer requires iTunes and using that to stream media to Boxee; there's also something called AirFoil that's an alternative for computers but I don't have any experience with that.

[darcilicious]

There has been some talk lately about Boxee APPs with some airplay capabilities, but I can't really say how any of that works, as I use no airplay stuff myself.

Even if such an APP can do it, you would definitely have to navigate the Boxee menu in order to start that APP before using any of its features, so this is probably not the functionality you wanted.

You've got it all backwards. Boxee apps don't use AirPlay, iOS apps do, and they stream to remote devices (like the Boxee Box, AppleTV, etc) that are connected to a TV.

So there's not need to "navigate the Boxee menu" -- in fact it's not even possible. You start up your iOS app, select Boxee Box as the remote destination after tapping on the AirPlay icon, and the content from your iOS device is streamed to the Box and displayed on the TV.

[Ronald]

You've got it all backwards. Boxee apps don't use AirPlay, iOS apps do, and they stream to remote devices (like the Boxee Box, AppleTV, etc) that are connected to a TV.

OK, so I misunderstood that part then. I thought something had to be done at the Boxee end too, in order for that streaming to be possible. At the time I didn't remember that there is a configuration flag in the settings specifically to enable iOS stream reception.

Like I already said, "I use no airplay stuff myself", so it slipped my mind.

Best regards: Ronald

[j4bles]

The best use for AirPlay that I have found is with the iPad 2 and the Boxee app for iPad. I'll use the app on the iPad to find the media I want to watch and then AirPlay it to the Boxee.

If they updated the Boxee to take advantage of the AirPlay Mirroring, then you could watch/listen to any content through the Boxee.