Here's an answer to a sensible question from their Q&A after the event (for which the live stream failed miserably):



I guess they think only single geeks will buy their product, not anyone with a family who might be interested in having multiple people's social networks connected at the same time.

BTW, they also removed the Photos and Music functionality from the main menu and tossed it into the Files category.

They thanked Intel and a couple of other corporates but didn't thank XBMC and the rest of the open source software. It's pretty much the backbone of this thing, and by far the most difficult part of the pie to develop from a software perspective.

I think the new UI puts the sub-menu stuff above the content, which on a widescreen display doesn't make much sense. I really liked how the optional stuff could be scrolled off to the left in the beta UI. IMO, radically changing the UI after launching the box is a bit of a bait and switch. They really should have rolled the new UI into a beta back in August to have had enough time to properly test it.

With only two rows and 4 columns, we're now only able to see 8 movie covers instead of the previous 15. Maybe there will be a setting for this (doubt it).

Positive comments now.. In the movie descriptions on the one screen shot it now shows the year and director listed ABOVE the synopsis and it now finally shows the cast too. Very welcome change IMO.

Hopefully we'll eventually be able to search by director and cast member. I'd also like to see some marker that says what format/resolution a particular movie is in. At least being able to identify between 720, 1080 and 480.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't go to crap. Firmware updates are mandatory.