Boxee Comparison Question

[Catherine22]

I would also suggest you to buy the Boxee. It is great to use and i think much better than Apple TV in some cases.

[ramtam060905]

Actually I've got a Iomega TV with Boxee and an Apple TV 2G.

The Apple TV is a "streaming multimedia set top box" which can stream on your TV movies and contents coming from iTunes Store. It can also read some files on HDD (connected to the same LAN), but the range of files is very narrow.
It is useful if you want to buy or rent movies on iTunes Store, or if you want to view video podcast available on iTunes.
The latest Apple TV (3G) has 1080p feature and probably will be able to load some app from App Store, but actually it cannot.
Using Airplay you can watch on TV videos, pictures and music stored on your iDevices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch), and if you have one of the latest iPhone and iPad you can "mirror" your iDevice's display on your TV.
It has no storage feature.
Apple TV 2G can be "jailbreaked" and re-flashed with XMBC platform, transforming it into something similar to Boxee Box.

On the other side, Boxee can let you see a wide range of video files: let's say it can read almost anything, stored on a USB HDD or another source on the LAN.
It can browse every URL on Internet, stream movies available for Boxee community, and load a lot of apps.
If you live in USA you can subscribe to Netflix, HULU+ and other movie sources.
Using Airplay you can watch on TV contents stored on Apple Devices.
It has no mirroring feature.

So, even though I'm an Apple user, I would suggest you to buy the Boxee (IMHO).

MB

Does the Boxee Box require a DLNA server to be running on your home machine? in order to stream content such as MP4 movies, music, etc..?? or can it simply find the shared storage via Windows and directly access it?

[darcilicious]

can it simply find the shared storage via Windows and directly access it?

Yes.

Boxee will do SMB (Windows filesharing), NFS, AFP, and UPnP (though UPnP doesn't work for identifying content but is fine for file browsing and playback).

[AminB]

Buy an ATV2 w/ XBMC and Boxee Box !

[a_team]

IMO - I would go Boxee, but hold off until they release a new software update or release a speculated product announcement. There's rumors of a new Boxee Box coming out this fall due to company activity or lack-of in the last 3 months. The current Boxee has an Intel chip that is no longer being supported and needs a firmware update which inflicts the following issues with Boxee:

(1) HD Audio Drops Out
(2) 3TB Drives are not supported
(3) FLASH WEBSITES and FLASH CONTENT DOES NOT WORK (Lost Global, Fox, HGTV, and a bunch of other channels because of this)

Even though Boxee has a major upper hand on Apple, I would hold off until fall just to see if a new Boxee comes out. You've made it this far w/out.

Also, if you live in Canada and outside of Toronto or Vancouver you probably won't get more than 4 channels and two of them will be Frainch. There is no PVR capability for the Live TV yet, they intend to have PVR capabilities but there was a satisfaction survey that went out to long-term users questioning if they would be willing to pay a monthly subscription fee for PVR capabilities. It's unknown if they still intend to charge for this service, but they still intend to create PVR capabilities. If you are in Canada, you can subscribe for a DNS service with www.unblock-us.com and setup your Boxee to be able to get American Channels, American Netflix, Pandora, and a couple other things. The antennae that comes with the Live TV is a piece of garbage, so be prepared to fork out an additional 60-80$ on an antennae (gomohu.com - Works well).

I love my Boxee and it works great. If you're tech savy or willing to learn and already have a media library, you will too.

Last advice: Purchase it from somewhere with a good return policy in the event it doesn't work out for you and you end up hating the thing more than the new Star Wars movies.

Good luck