Boxee PC- EOL - Now what?

[fordch]

I've spent a good deal of time recently and a few years ago when I started putting together my "cut the cable solution" at home.

When boxee hit alpha, and unfortunately tailored my solution for HTPC around the boxee idea. (There were and are other solutions out there that I checked on again but all of them really fail around the idea of cutting the cable)

Plex - Back then only MAC but the PC media server was cool and intuitive, focused around local media. Now at least there is a windows client. And phone client too "kinda nice but not really", its a lot like watching netflix on your phone. If you love it, you'll love this. I hate it

XBMC - Great player flexable very configurable (very time consuming), Plex addon non existent when i started, and always buggy every time i played with it. Again focused primarily on local media. Biggest complaint couldn't handle more then one TV show in a single directory without separating it into sub directories.

Boxee - Was/Is great it focuses around the show, more then the other two, yeah had the silly apps section, but they seemed to realize people care about the content not the provider.

PlayON - Cool idea, lots of content, playback varies, decent on my Xbox, fair on the WII. Inconsistent controls and it HATES NAS devices, unless you leave them unprotected (no user/password Least so support tells me, I will not leave anything unpassword protected so I have not tested this) Content is TERRIBLE to navigate, you must chose provider then navigate through a ton of folders to find what you want. PlayON has a phone app, not really all that useful unless you know networking you cannot connect outside your home.

Surprisingly no application really has gotten "content is king" not provider. It boggles my mind that the providers don't have a 5 second clip that plays at start and at commercials of "Brought to you by XXX". Just like with TV back in the day NO ONE cared what station it was on. Over time you started to learn the call letters and relating good programming to that provider. Basically product will define a company not the other way around!DUH

So for me that is where Boxee excelled. I purchased a NAS RAID 5, 6 TB of storage, setup a Twonky server on it hoping that UPnP would take off. Got a netflix subscription as that seemed to be key at the time still does.

Setup my file shares so I have a TV directory and a Movie Directory, i ripped my Season X of SHOW boom in the library, best part, so were web available episodes, even if they were the same episode!

Slowly over time I started grabbed another NAS (well actually attached a USB to my router no redundancy, basically a place to put stuff I could care less if i lose) and made a single directory for TV shows i wanted to maybe see and check out and delete later on, scripted it actually to delete everything after 6 months. Setup a showRSS feed to get content, again Boxee great job, found the shows, no individual directories, web available stuff populated perfectly.

Only real failure I found on Boxee part of content was the "queue" local files didn't trigger a queue, only web content, removing local only stuff from the queue was buggy at best. A recently added would have been perfect to show movies i recently copied or TV shows as reminder.

So life was good, kind of Boxee has issues with web content, not all but some, apps break all the time, providers change how they serve the media etc. Hulu keeps breaking, but work arounds are found, eventually installed Hulu desktop. Life gets better cable bills been cut for 3 years maybe 4 I don't recall.

My answer, BOXEE BOX! Right? Absolutely DESPISE the idea of yet ANOTHER item connected to my TV. Why? Well lets see, I have my Xbox and Wii to watch netflix because Boxee fails in the netflix app, nor does it tie MY netflix content into MY movies/TV. VCR for the stuff I haven't converted to digital Media, my HTPC as our cable replacement sorta, a DVD player which pretty much only gets used for Seen it anymore. 5 items, here we come #6... (don't get me started on remotes.)

I have My HTPC setup with Boxee/Hulu Desktop, why because well boxee was continually being blocked by hulu and well honestly the hulu playback kind of sucked anyway.

The Boxee box arrrives! Life should be somewhat good other then I expect to have to switch to the PC for hulu content as I won't get a Hulu + account, if I'm paying for it, I'm not watching commercials.

I won't delve into the many crashes, slow upgrades, still pictures, jittery playback, lack of hulu standard, and other problems that the boxee box had, I'll simply say that it was by far worse then my HTPC running 0.9 beta.

So finally after long wait, Boxee comes out with 1.5 for the PC, my first thought is THANK GOD. The beta is a great application but I've watched it deteriorate over time, natural progression when NO SUPPORT happens to a product, it becomes dated and things break since the nature of the web changes all the time.

Played with Boxee 1.5 overall it's a huge step backwards, could care less about the loss of Vudu, I wouldn't buy a Vudu show anyway, 2 bucks for a movie/episode? Red box is 3 blocks away for $1 + I already have my Netflix account and they just raised the damn price. Loss of Netflix although it was terrible on 0.9 was a huge downpoint for me, even though I was already using something else.

So the family and myself TRY anyway, and find pretty much the same problems as well as a huge change in the interface functionality. Same jittery content, same issues with queue, and more you can find many posts complaining bout how 1.5 is a step backwards, I wont go on about it.

Anyway I've given up on the new 1.5 version of boxee, rolled back to running 0.9 while get the Plex server situation. Server/Client running on the same hardware as I have my boxee box, is well not enough, but it's an older system so I knew I'd have to replace it sooner or later. Funny part is, my old laptop runs boxee better then the commercial "boxee box". And runs Plex well enough to outperform Boxee in every way.

Now before you go running out and installing a Plex server let me tell you a few minor issues I found with it.

#1 Plex just like all the others separates content from provider unfortunately so you won't find your local media files and web content under one queue. There is a solution though called PlexFlix, it's mac only so I can't tell you how well it works from first hand experience but it appears to do EXACTLY what I want. May end up writing my own plug in to do it.

#2 Plex focuses more on media scraping then XBMC and definatly more then Boxee, the good thing is, Plex at least puts the content it CANT identify into your movies selection unlike boxee which use to bug the crap out of me.

#3 Plex although it has a opensubtitles plug in, it doesn't work that well. As near as I can figure the show must match exactly for it to use the file from opensubtitles but I'm not 100% positive. I have found a work around though, it requires a separate process to launch a batch to download srt files. Not as elegant as the Boxee "choose your subtitle" idea but it does work. Check out EolSol. The GUI interface suxs just use the CLI interface.

#4 Plex doesn't identify "watched" online videos differently from unwatched, really annoying.

#5 Plex is 2 separate applications, which isn't terrible, but if you are running just boxee you won't get a "same/same" feel running the server and the client on the same box. I tried it both ways, Server/Client on my boxee box, wasn't bad just sluggish. Separated it to a different server (much slower server actually) and it worked great. The Server does most of the meta data scrapping and handles client settings so it doesn't need a beefy system.

#6 Plex multi-user is based upon windows log in. Not a terrible setback but just something different, I'd prefer an application level log in but the family will test it out and I'll let you know.

Ok well I'm sorry to have rambled on for so long, but I'd love to hear from others who have been struggling with Boxee End Of Life for the PC/HTPC and see if anyone else has found a better solution for the PC.

[fordch]

3/12/2012 - Ok, sorry it took so long to finally get back here, took me a bit to get some hardware re-arranged to give a fair response.

Plex is slightly different then Boxee, mostly having less online media available. No Vudu (I hate Vudu anyway), as well as many of the other online video sources.

It does have Fox, NBC, Hulu, Justin.TV, Netflix and many others, and they all work really well, I would say my only real issue with Plex thus far, is the lack of individual queues per person. In Boxee, I created a "family" account and accounts for each member of the household, was nice for us to be able to keep track of our "individual" series without marking everyone as watched. I have yet to test separate Window logins but no one in the family seems that interested in it nor the shared un/watched that annoying.

The other downside is currently Plex doesn't handle opensubititles as well as Boxee does, but there is a work around, a small executable called SolEol. There are other ways but the basic idea is you have to really have local .srt files to match up with your files.

I LOVE the custom media's, I have a section for Family Video, which is organized as TV Shows are so I have Christmas > Season 2009 and then many episodes of Christmas day, other "shows" are Easter, Children-Each by name, etc.

Lastly it also has an Android App as well as iPhone, so now i simply sync and remove my photo's to plex and I still have them available to me when I'm out. I really love that, video's take me a little longer to organize into the appropriate "show" but it's a small price to pay to have it available to me all the time without killing all the space on my SD card.

All of the complaints I have are very minor overall, Plex loads slow on my HTPC, takes a few about 15 seconds to close, has a hair more buffering then Boxee did, but not often enough to notice. At least once you get your video settings and optimization correct it plays better in most cases then Boxee does.

Lastly, I converted a few friends to Plex now, and like me have fairly large internet pipes, so we have so far shared our content between servers with very few playback issues, and all the issues so far have been related to our pipe saturation levels. Over time something that will resolve itself.

ISO files are currently supported and work well for me, I have read about users who have issues, but unfortunately all the complaints I have heard have had no details like what movie, what program they used to make the ISO etc. Personally I use AnyDVD to rip the ISO's and have yet to have one fail.

Summary:

Long and short in my opinion Plex has done a much better job then Boxee did, the lacks in the software are easily replaced by how well the product excels in what it does do.

Hope to see you on the Plex forums soon!

[darcilicious]

I'm going with Plex for my PCs and iOS devices. I love the server/client approach, especially for tracking all my local content.

You do need a beefier server if you need any transcoding (sometimes needed for the iOS clients, almost always for the Roku client, and always for remote streaming, etc). I'm toying with the idea of getting rid of Orb and AirVideo and having folks use Plex remotely instead.

LOVE the media manager. For me, it's been simple and straightforward to use though the server has crashed a few times, not sure why. Love that the server API allows for third-party scanning and metadata agents (someone has already written one for SageTV).

The Windows client is still a little buggy but nothing that I can 't live with. I love the "recently aired" view! I did have a UX issue of sorts related to installing new skins but love the fact that there are skins available.

The iOS Plex app is stellar. It does local and remote streaming and includes a full-featured remote.

Content plugins/add-ons/channels are hit or miss. It appears that Netflix is broken for a lot of folks but I believe I've got it working; Spotify (if it works) seems to only work on Macs. I think Hulu works but I'm not sure. The BBC iPlayer will play radio streams worldwide (not limited to those in the UK).

For me, Plex is the way to go; but I can totally see where XBMC would be preferable in other situations.

[fordch]

We'll see on a beefier box, I'll report back after about a month of use/testing. So far I'm pleased overall and I've only been really working on getting things in order since Thursday. Testing on my laptop, building a new server, editing meta data and reading etc.

Have you played with the myplex sharing yet? Trying to convince a friend of mine to build a server to see how it works with my client from home...

As for a remote app, don't care I have the Logitech diNovo Mini love it honestly even with the minor issue of the down arrow being a little sensitive to the touch plus bluetooth has saved me some hassle when identifying bad NIC cards or routing issues. The loss of a back button to quit the video was a big downer for me with boxee 1.5 having to hit Function TAB to get escape was dumb.

I did buy the mediacenter for the android still tinkering but it's neet so far to see all my video's and home videos show up. Haven't really tested remote access yet. I work from home so no opportunities as of yet

[darcilicious]

It's not just a "remote app", it's a full Plex client that just happens to include a remote

(I have a Harmony 550 that I use for everything but my HTPC at the moment but that's only because I'm lacking an IR receiver for it currently; that, and I have Intelliremote server installed so I get by.)

Re: myPlex -- I've streamed over 3G and remote Wifi to my iPhone but I still want to do a little more testing before I declare it as good as AirVideo. But I love the fact that it has cover art, etc. One net trick I read about for iOS and x264/mkv files (90% or more of my local content) is that if you enable the full speed (wifi) and direct stream, the server doesn't do any transcoding, that's what I cal SWEET

[cooldfuz1on]

The main reason that i dont use plex is that it doesn't have some apps like navi-x, AOL HD, etc...and i dont use XBMC because its not easy to configurate, i really dont know why they didnt make the configuration simple like boxee...!? because every other HTPC software that there is in the market is very simple to configurate, why to continue with something so old and complicated!?! Because if they make config simple they would get everybody from Boxee, Plex, etc and rule!

[adam0]

I have been lightly searching (new job, = not a lot of time) for a replacement for boxee since my initial testing with 1.5 but have yet to find anything that works the way I want it to. I find XBMC to be the best looking option, but I am still having a hard time getting things organized the way that I want. I setup plex on my work machine just to test out and it seems like a pretty simple interface, but I haven't setup the server side yet to really test it out. The one feature that I have on boxee .9 (although only through an app created by someone else) that no one else seems to offer is the Play Anything app which is basically just a random feature for movies tv and music. New stuff I can select on my own, but I have a LOT of old content that I have spent many an hour ripping titling and organizing and it is very nice when I get home at night to be able to just go into the app hit random and watch what is essentially my own personal TV station (with a skip button and no ads) This app is accessible via 1.5 as well (with a few more button presses than before), but not worth trying to use since I have to restart boxee just to back out of the menu.

Do either of you guys or anyone else reading this thread know of a similar feature in plex or xbmc?

Ultimately none of the HTPC programs that I have heard of or tested myself do everything that I would want this type of software to do, but I think if I can get an XBMC(local)/ROKU(online) setup going and retain the ability to have random playback at least for local content then I will be content.


Team Boxee: I continue to be very disappoint.

[fordch]

Video Shuffle

Seems to work so far... Playanything broke when i rolled back to 0.9 from 1.5, not motivated enough to figure out why. Playanything was important to me long time ago when I thought that would be useful, over time I found it easier to search by genre. I Think the sort by "recently added" will enhance that for me at least where I'm not going to use the Video Shuffle.

[darcilicious]

Do mean the plugin or using shuffle in the settings files?

[fordch]

LOL even better then the plugin, I'll have to try this out. Seems like you can randomly select even by genre which might be cool.

OH Yeah - Dar, I did start playing with the app on my android phone, I do like how i can browse selections etc is rather nice. Thanks for the tip, doubt it will replace my mini keyboard, but it's nice to be able to browse while something else is playing etc and choose before the show ends.