Migration from Boxee Box To HTPC XBMC... My experience.

[movolans]

So I thought I would wait a week or two after switching before posting this but I have migrated 100% to XBMC after around 15 months of Boxee Box usage now.

Before I get going I thought I'd share my set up with you... I'm using a 55 inch Samsung D7000 LED TV, a QNap TS-212 NAS with a 6gb Raid array (around 400 full blu ray rips) and a Sony HDMI receiver with 5.1 sound. Before Boxee I tried all sorts of streaming and DLNA based options and turned to the Boxee Box for an all in one solution.

Early on my experience was pretty good, I was still using USB local storage and the firmware was still young. I found the whole thing a little slow but everything pretty much worked. Firmware updates were quite regular I was a happy Boxee user all in all.

As time progressed new firmware came out, the interface got prettier but some strange issues were introduced. I got stuttering in 720p TV shows that played smoothly, features like custom zoom were broken and some of my local content refused to be scraped. I endured and hoped it would all get fixed.

Well... these things were never fixed and I put it down to set up and tried to live with it all. Recently I bit the bullet and went with A dual core Zotac Z-Box AD-04 (with 120gb SSD and 8GB of Ram) connected it all to my NAS and hey presto! Everything works, everything plays and every single movie was scraped and scanned in under 10 minutes.

The boxes shipped out today and went to a new home. Ok so the HTPC cost me just under £300 but the Boxee Box was £190 when I bought it... so not a million miles away. Plus I could of gone for a 60gb SSD and 4gb of RAM. and cut the cost down to around £250.

I'm truly not here to flame or troll or anything else but I have to say the HTPC experience for me so far has just been so much better than Boxee, it's quick, it's smooth and everything works. There are a huge amount of options for customisation and the open source aspect means that it's constantly being improved, with no hidden agendas.

Sure there is probably a little more set up as it's essentially a computer running Windows 7 but as we are probably all geeks here anyway this is more of a pro than a con If anyone has any questions about how I set things up or anything else I'll be glad to answer... and before Darcilicious jumps down my throat I just put this up to let people know my experience... not to dis Boxee.

Hopefully the Boxee Box V2 will solve a lot of the issues and stop people making the same move I have

[spacholka]

My story is the exact same as yours. XBMC is a far superior setup.

I went the following system:
Asus E35M1-M Pro motherboard
8gb AMD Entertainment Ram
60gb OCZ Agility 3 SSD
an El cheapo HTPC case with 275w psu.

I also added a Radeon HD 6450 so I could watch Netflix in HD. This is due to Microsoft not offering hardware acceleration for the e350 gpu in Silverlight. The gpu can handle anything else you can throw at it. Its more than capable just not allowed to do it. The cheap $20 6450 fixed this. No other issues to report.

If someone else wanted to do this they can get something similar to what I got with the Foxconn e350 barebones box which goes on sale for around $100 often at Newegg.com. Final cost is not much different than that of the Boxee Box once u add storage and ram.

I was called a troll in another thread for pointing this stuff out on here but oh well. Name calling never hurt me before.

[bek]

I really liked my XBMC setup, but I got rid of it because it was running on an Apple TV 2, which was suuuuuper slow. Also, it would not play full DVDs (you know, what the .VOB files and all) as the Boxee Box will.

The option to identify by folder name instead of file name was fantastic... it got 99% of my identification right the first time, as compared to Boxee getting about 10% right. XBMC was very impressive. The skinnable interface was awesome, too.

If I had run it on a faster machine (my fault) AND it played DVDs (its fault), then it would have been a keeper for sure.

[ScottAllyn]

I still believe that the Boxee Box is the best single box solution for playing local content and streaming online content. Yes, there are lots of bugs and there have been a lot of disappointments since its initial release, but for most people, it does what they want. I now have 5 friends with Boxee Boxes and all but 1 of them use the boxes regularly and are generally happy with them.

Having said that, I've gone the XBMC route for local files and use a Roku2 for online services. I don't really have any problems with my one remaining Boxee Box (besides the HD audio dropouts); I just prefer the customization and feature-set of XBMC for local files and the Roku supports Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video, both of which I've been using recently. The NHL app also seems to work better on the Roku.

I'm not going to try to argue that the HTPC route is cheaper, because it definitely isn't. It also requires more time to and knowledge to setup and maintain. And unless you're intimately familiar with computers and operating systems, the more you mess around with the underlying OS, the more you risk mucking up your XBMC install, especially on these little NanoPCs. For the average consumer, it's not a very good solution at all. For someone who doesn't mind spending the extra cash and has good computer knowledge and a desire to "futz around" with settings and hardware... it can work out quite nicely.

[movolans]

Why was this moved to 'Off topic' where it will never be seen?! I wanted this to be seen by people in the boxee box forum. That was the whole point of me posting this at length so people could make an informed decision.

[defenderbob]

Why was this moved to 'Off topic' where it will never be seen?! I wanted this to be seen by people in the boxee box forum. That was the whole point of me posting this at length so people could make an informed decision.

I see it in the "New Posts" - thats about all I read anyhow.

I am also running an XBMC setup - though the Boxee is my primary. I have not many issues at all with the Boxee regarding identifying - I run everything to Ember first, and the only thing that Boxee goofed on that I had to correct was the recent history channel's Hatfields and McCoy's.

Depending on where things go (Boxee updates / Flash vs HTML 5 etc) I may be looking at getting XBMC off my primary desktop and getting a mini machine to run it in the background in my entertainment center. Having 2 little ones, I do not push everything through my reciever (I cannot remember the last time it was on - and most likely will be dumping it for a sound-bar).

I think there are some real benifits to XBMC (rtmp streams in Navi, interface is awesome and smooth and very customizable.

[darcilicious]

Why was this moved to 'Off topic' where it will never be seen?!

If you looked, you would see that your post is still listed in the Boxee Box help section with a redirect here. It will be seen just fine.

[movolans]

Thanks for pointing that out but still not sure why it was moved at all... it's not 'off topic', it's about my experience with Boxee and will hopefully help Boxee Box users make an informed decision. With all the problems lately I would imagine some users are looking for viable alternatives.

[spacholka]

AND it played DVDs (its fault), then it would have been a keeper for sure.

I havn't had any trouble with dvds/bluray on my machine. I am running xbmc on w7 though not ATV2, dunno if that makes a difference.