Ok, just jumping a little ahead of myself and starting a new thread for this product instead of just tagging to the end of that netgear thread.

The box will ship on November 10th in the US and Canada and I've bitten the bullet and done did go and pre-order one. $225 after tax (free shipping) from Best Buy Canada.

I know Matt has also pre-ordered (US) so it's going to be interesting to see who gets it first.

Reading the Boxee forums it's apparent that the developers have been working on the box-specific version of the software and have not been rolling those changes into the public install-anywhere version. There's no telling what changes, fixes or features differ from the public beta at this point. And there's been nothing announced about when the public version will be on par with the Box version nor when the Box version will once again be updated...

At this point, I'm leaning heavily in the Boxee Box direction, but waiting until the final reviews are in. On paper, Google TV should be right in my wheelhouse, as I've got a Dish Network DVR that's fully compatible with it. Unfortunately, the Google TV reviews suggest that the integration is very disappointing. Now, it's likely that any potential Boxee Box integration with my DVR will also be disappointing, and certainly the Google TV boxes could get firmware upgrades that make things better, but Boxee's had a long time to get the HTPC thing right, whereas Google is new to the game (though obviously no stranger to entering a market late and being instantly competitive.)

My hope is that the impending arrival of the Box gets Google really working hard on better DVR integration and improved UI on their boxes. If not, I'll probably settle for the Box, and deal with the fact that DVR content and HTPC content will be pretty much separate.

Here's my take...

Google TV is always going to have an ugly-ass UI and it's never going to work quite right. That's how Google rolls and it's not going to change here. Like everything Google, this device will always remain somewhat of an enigma, with no one actually understanding quite what it is. It's not a streamer, it's not a rental box, it's..... Who the hell knows.

The Boxee box is not going to integrate with a Dish DVR. It may never do so. It's possible one day, provided the Dish PVR supports browsing its content over a network and they share their DRM with Boxee, otherwise forget about it. It's possible the Boxee UI will appear on other integrated products in the future however, so we can't rule out a Dish product with Boxee inside. Won't hold my breath for that one though.

If the Boxee Box doesn't live up to my expectations, I'll return it, so I feel pretty safe with the pre-order in that regard. I've already mentioned my biggest gripes with the software platform in the other thread, though I don't expect them to be resolved in the first software release for the Box (except maybe the article sorting)

I dunno, it seems to me that you're coloring your Google TV forecast too much based on the Android situation. I can see some parallels, in that there are multiple hardware platforms to support, but I'm assuming some level of learning from their mistakes, and without the carriers to worry about, they can probably keep the experience pretty consistent across the devices, with the obvious exceptions that the TV is a TV and the blu-ray player is a blu-ray player.

I'm not really sure I buy into your idea that a device needs to fit into a single category of being a "streamer" or a "rental box" or whatever. HTPCs do a lot of different things, because the home theater has become a nightmare of walled-off content. Simply doing one thing well means you're just another box that I have to switch to on my universal remote. My PS3 gives me rental and some limited local content capabilities, but not enough streaming service integration and no way to record shows on my cable/satellite. Boxee does some of these things very well and others it's just okay at. Google TV seems to be aiming at almost all of the things Boxee does well, plus the DVR integration. Why does it have to fit into one single category, and what single category does Boxee fit into that Google TV wouldn't?

You misunderstood, so I'l have to explain...



Actually I'm basing it off my research into the Logitech and Sony versions of GoogleTV. As a backgrounder on my opinion of Google design, I have the entire history of Google efforts colouring my opinion however. I rest my case.





No, I'm not talking about fitting into a mold, I'm talking about making it clear to the consumer/customer what the device is for and what it does, even if it does 3 or 4 things. Your HTPC example is good. Google TV is not an HTPC though. It is not clearly defined, which is like many other Google efforts unfortunately.

A good way to describe an HTPC/PVR to the layman is "it's a digital/tapeless VCR" - sort of implied by "Personal Video Recorder" but some people need it broken down further.

Boxee is a media player. You can simply call it a digital video player for some people. That's how you describe and position it. More in depth, it is a video player capable of playing your videos, rental videos from multiple providers, internet video for free and by subscription. Each one of those can be further broken down of course. As a media player it also handles music and photos - but like all other products that do this, the UI is quite sucky. The only decent solutions for music at an entry price are from Slim Devices and Sonos. And maybe the Apple TV is now good at photos.

GoogleTV isn't a TV. I know it can play some videos - can it play local sources? They don't seem to play that up. Does it need a keyboard and ugly-ass remote? Seems like it's WebTV. It totaly undefined and that's going to be a hard pill for customers to swallow. Google is simply used to banking on the Google name without actually doing the hard work that other companies need to do to distill their product vision into a sharp and easy to understand concept.

Hey, look who you're talking to! I'm one of the biggest Google fanboys you'll meet (yeah, I said it, it's true), but surprisingly I have no interest whatsoever in the Google TV products. Maybe it's because I already have a Tivo...

For me, there's two things I want from a media streamer. I want to watch locally-stored videos and Youtube. My Tivo can do this already, but very clumsily. To me, the Boxee Box looks to have the best interface of all the options out there.

Another thing that bugs me about Google TV is the move to integrate it into the TVs. I simply DO NOT WANT integrated products, especially into my TV. I want my TV to last for years, five at least, and I just don't see any of these devices or services lasting five years. Hell, I wish my TV didn't have speakers built-in, so I understand I'm at an extreme here, but it seems a little foolish to me to rely on any of these integrated solutions.

The race is on, Bruno! I did order a good long while ago, so we'll see who gets it first. Initially, Amazon sent me a notice saying it would get to me on 11/16, even though I'd ordered overnight shipping (thank you, Prime). Recently, though, they revised it to the 12th. I can't wait!

One last note: have you guys seen the remote solutions for the Logitech and Sony Google TV products? Are you kidding? Do these companies honestly think they're going to be able to mass market a solution that adds a huge keyboard to the living room? I consider my wife to be pretty darn geeky, but she is not going to want a keyboard sitting on the coffee table. And as far as I'm concerned, the Apple TV remote is too far in the opposite direction. Any input for these devices is going to need some sort of text entry, and I think Boxee has the right solution. You get keyboard input without requiring users to have a giant keyboard or a smartphone.

If so then I hope they finally fix the stupid design which has stuck around since the XBMC days where it chews through CPU even when idle. This is a legacy of the implementation in the original Xbox which needed the game to constantly redraw the screen as fast as it can even if it wasn't needed. The XBMC team know about this problem and its just a "won't fix" status on it.

Frankly, I'm not really impressed with the XBMC nor the fact that Boxee is spawned from it. But that's just the way it is... When I get the next beta I'll see if it does this on my Mac. I don't know how I'll verify it on the Box.

The box has already shown up in at least one BC-area Future Shop store. Despite there being three of the product on the shelf, employees would not sell them until the 10th.

I think with overnight shipping Matt should be the first person to get one. I'm not holding my breath for even getting mine this week.

Amazon is estimating a delivery date of the 12th. I don't know why it won't be the 11th, but at least it'll be this week (hopefully).

Oh, and happy birthday!

Thanks. The Box was supposed to be my birthday present to myself, but then I also went out and bought an unlocked iPhone.

I'm looking forward to seeing what's changed in the Box from the beta I have on my Mac now, but I'm a little apprehensive about it. It's been made pretty clear in the forums that the main focus of the Box is bringing internet-based streams to your TV, whereas my most important objective is playback of local content.

Okay, but Boxee supports local content better than almost anything out there, so unless they're crippling the Box to limit features that Boxee supports already, you should be good, right?

All true, but as Bruno pointed out earlier (in the other thread, I think), Boxee is intent on injecting online content whether you want it or not, and they don't give you the option of turning that off (at least, as far as we've seen).

For example, I have every season of Buffy on DVD, but I keep a video file of "Once More, With Feeling" on my computer to watch snippets of it from time to time. On Boxee, it'll create an entry for Buffy the Vampire slayer in my list of TV Shows, which is fine. But when I go into that, I'm presented with every episode that the service is able to find streaming online.

This might seem like a cool feature, and it kind of is, but I usually (99% of the time) won't want that. It clutters things up and makes it much more difficult to get to the things I want to see. If I had a quick option to turn that on (and have it off by default), that would be great, but I don't want it always on with no ability to turn it off.

Clearly this has not been enough of an annoyance to prevent me from buying the Box, but it will still annoy me during day to day usage. Unless, as Bruno also points out, they've changed this behavior on the Box and not put it into the general release.

It's as Matt has pointed out, in addition to possibility that local source payback just won't get as much attention as it might need, to address deficiencies, fix bugs and of course expand the feature set.

I've previously mentioned a number of other things, including, the inability to filter out articles when sorting, almost non-existant parental controls, impossible to add home movies or commercial direct-to-video movies, impossible to add or modify the metadata associated with movies and TV show episodes (covers, descriptions, etc.), in many cases you can't use its built-in correction mechanism to tell it that a particular file is something else (in the case of mis-identity), etc..

But generally speaking, yes, it currently offers a better balance of features than any other box out there. That's why I've decided to take a chance on it as well.

This is one thing that really bothers me. I'm really hoping they add something to address this. I know you can play files by browsing through a directory structure, but I can do that with my $99 WDTV. I'm getting the Boxee Box for its interface, and I'd love to use that UI to browse the dozens of tapes I need to digitize some day (I have way too many digital8 tapes cluttering up my bookshelves - like at least 60 of them).

Yeah, that's what I was getting at -- all of the complaints you guys have put forth are valid, but at the end of the day, there isn't anything better out there right now for local playback. I do share your frustration, though -- most or all of the problems you've cited were handled properly ages ago by HTPC solutions like Meedio (which ended up being bought by Yahoo and crippled severely, not sure if it even exists now.) The fact that the "market leader" in local playback can't get some of these things right is downright sad.

Ok I win. .

I just picked up two Boxee Boxes @ the local Best Buy. I'm on their wifi typing this on my iPhone now.

WTF? If I had known it would be at Best Buy, I would have just picked it up in the store! Hmm...I wonder if I can still cancel my order...

Wasn't the November 10th date supposed to be for the people that pre-ordered? I thought the store launch was the 17th! That darn Boxee...

Just got in as I had some other errands to run.

Here's an un"box"ing

http://twistedmelon.com/blog/nov2010.html#11101001

An unboxing? Oh dear

I don't get very elaborate. My last unboxing was a picture of the product box and then a picture of a trash can with the box in it.

With these images I just really wanted to show the relative size of the product - it's smaller in person than it looked like to me on the web.

Hmm.. Hopefully I'll have enough time to test it tonight. On Saturday I'll have my DVDO Edge scaler/switcher so that I can have multiple devices connected to my TV at the same time with a single HDMI connection at the back of the set itself. So today I'll have to swap Boxee for my Sage TV Extender.

That's what I do, at least until I get a receiver that can handle HDMI. At the moment I have a cheap little Monoprice 4-port HDMI switch, and the beauty of the model I got is that the two outputs are HDMI, which goes to my TV, and TOSLINK, which goes into my receiver. It's nice not having to change the input on the TV, just the receiver and the switch. It's not fewer devices I have to switch between, but my TV doesn't have three HDMI ports on the back, and I'd still have to run audio from each of the components to the receiver anyway, so this still cuts down on at least three cables. I'll be replacing my WDTV Live on that switch with the Boxee, so we're basically doing the same thing.

I still don't know how your Best Buy, in Canada, got the Box so early, because the stores around here have no idea what I'm talking about. I also can't believe it took me so long to figure out why I wouldn't get my overnight shipment on the 11th. It's a holiday! Does UPS take that off?

*edit*
Hmm, I guess not. I also just remembered that UPS doesn't tend to handle my overnight Amazon shipments. If the company that's delivering it does observe Veteran's Day, I would have been better off saving the $4 and getting it through UPS...

Basically, what I'm saying Bruno, is that I'm jealous!

*edit 2*
Just compared Best Buy .com/.ca, and it looks like they sell the Box in Canada but not the US. Strange...

Yeah, it IS strange. I'm wondering why in Canada they didn't partner up with Amazon as well. Must have been due to some pre-existing DLink relationship. BB has a lot of DLink stuff here. FutureShop, which is owned by BB, also has it in stock.

I don't think people are supposed to have them yet, because apparently Boxee are doing a live web stream unveiling tonight. The software on the units isn't even the final version yet. After updating you are still sent a beta download. Maybe the new software will be available later tonight.

All in all, I think they really botched the timing on this release.

Also, I just found out that apparently there's a *NEW* UI for the software debuting with the box. WTF!? There aren't any pictures of it on their site nor on the box. Big disservice to themselves not showing the UI on the box - shoppers not already intimately familiar with Boxee won't have any reason to pick it over cheaper alternatives off the shelf in a store...

First impressions not good. Too much setup, including signing up for an account before you can do anything with the device.

The keyboard doesn't feel very good in the hand - the key clicks are not responsive and need to be pressed very hard. I suspect I know what kind of buttons they're using internally.

Anyway, you can't actually create a new account. When you go enter a password it immediately says it's invalid. And the password confirmation always says it doesn't match, even when it does. Ooops!

Well, you always had to sign up for an account to use Boxee. I thought you were using it before, weren't you?

I'll probably be annoyed by the keyboard too, but it CANNOT be worse than entering in search queries on my WDTV Live. Nothing can possibly more miserable than that. NOTHING!


Apparently you really weren't supposed to get that Box today.

Yeah, I do already have an account. But my computer was upstairs at the time so I had no idea what the password or even user name for that was.

I finally got it to go after restarting the box.

It also needed a firmware update (to sep 20 version) before it would properly access shares on my network - it would always time out with the firmware it comes with.

The most annoying bug I've found so far is that it STOPS audio output on SPDIF when it is not actively producing a sound. That may or may not affect you, but with my Pre-Amp it definitely affects me. My Pre-Amp shuts of its outputs when it's not receiving a signal, so you can see on its display the DTS or DOLBY indicator turning off when Boxee stops making sound. This has the effect of eating any initial click that should be heard when moving around the UI. Only the second and subsequent clicks will be heard, and only if they come within a small time-out of you first moving the UI focus to produce the initial click.

It might be responsible also for a slight noise when pausing and unpausing. I'm waiting till 1.0 to verify again and report the issue. I MAY be able to work around it in the settings of my Pre-Amp as well, but I'll also have to look into that.

My pre-order shipped out today, but I haven't yet received any shipping confirmation from BB. Looks like I'll be the owner of two boxes shortly. It *would* be three, but the second one I have on hand now will be dropped off down the street at my friend's place in a few hours.

EDIT. DAMN, that's timing. I just received an email precisely when I pressed the submit button on this post. It's the BB shipping confirmation.

The changes for the 1.0 version of the Boxee software are significant to say the least. It looks like they've completely redone the interface in fact, keeping only the concept, but reworking the layout completely. The images in the thread I'm linking below are not that impressive - I really hope they didn't knock the cover view down to only 2 rows... Not everyone is using a 15" display - I can see more than 2 rows perfectly fine from 10 feet away on my 55" screen.

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=21673

I'm not bothered too much by the two cover rows, but I am concerned about how it seems like, overall, they've made everything a little...bigger. I agree, when I'm 10 feet from my 60" TV, I don't need this stuff to be huge. It's going to look cartoonish. What I find weird is that those first three shots show this new "big" look, and the fourth [Die Antwoord!] has tiny text.

I'll see how I like it. I got my shipping confirmation from Amazon today. It'll be shipping one-day FedEx, and it looks like it might arrive tomorrow after all. I hope I'm home, because FedEx is annoying in my complex about leaving packages when I'm not home...