jorge's stompbox

My quick boxee box impressions

There’s plenty of reviews out there on the new Boxee Box, here are my highlights:

• The UI is too slow, the thumbnails take forever to refresh (it’s as if they’re not cached?)
• It has played every thing I’ve thrown at it, it doesn’t break a sweat with 1080p at all (and all this over powerline ethernet!)
• They updated the UI and kind of buried your local content behind the online content, which would be fine if most of the online content wasn’t a browser on your television that you might or might not be able to full screen. 

Overall I think it’s great, it’s not quite awesome though. It’s a great value for $200 if you want to get your content to your TV.

Though the UI can be a bit frustrating I mostly care about presenting my media to me, and it does that very well even if it’s not as upfront to get my local media as I’d like. I have a Tivo, so I guess I am used to slow UX.

Hopefully the updates will fix the little details that are missing (little but annoting things like the subtitles always being on on every video and having to turn them off). 

Given the quality of the online content I’ll probably throw XBMC on it when someone makes that possible and concentrate on that — the presentation of online content on this thing basically proves how little content providers care about their online presence, which is probably the most bummer part of the experience.