Boxee Box by D-Link - Product Review

Boxee's approach to a network media player/media streamer is as unique as its oddly-shaped design. Boxee lists what your Facebook and/or Twitter friends are watching, as well as displays popular recommendations from other Boxee users. 

Boxee's other unique feature is its ability to find specific TV shows and movies on the web.  Unfortunately, the results are limited because the Boxee Box by D-Link has yet to work out deals with Netflix (as of 2/14/11 Netflix has been added), Hulu, Disney and most TV networks.  Still, Boxee's performance and content make it a great network media player addition to your home theater.

Pros:

• High quality 1080p resolution 
• Vudu 3D streaming movies
• Ability to find unique content: Get suggestions of online videos or a list of popular videos, and see what videos your Facebook and Twitter friends are watching
• Ability to find the TV show or movie you want without searching through multiple websites to find it
• Qwerty remote to type in search terms, logins, and comments
• Well organized menu screens
• Ability to play Pandora, even after you leave the app, can be controlled through the play/pause button or in the home menu bar
• Favoriting programs will put the newest episode into an easily accessible "watch later" playlist

Cons:

• So much content is blocked that Boxee is limited and can't find any show you want; i.e., there is no Hulu, Netflix, TNT, ABC, NBC, Fox or Disney content. (UPDATE 2/14/11: Boxee Box Now Adds Netflix).
• Doesn't search for specific files in your home network media libraries
• 3D streaming requires TV setup each time you use it
• Menu system may be confusing to novice users

Boxee's menu screens are easy to use but aren't like any other menu you find on media streamers or other home theater components. A typical menu will only display icons for file sources, photos, music, movies, and apps.

The Boxee home screen has six simple icons: friends, watch later, shows, movies, apps and files. But the Boxee also uses the home screen to get right into doing its job of suggesting new content for you to watch. Below the icons are recently added apps and popular shows and videos that Boxee recommends.  

The "friends" icon takes you to a screen that lists videos that your Facebook, Twitter or Google Buzz friends have shared. This makes it easy to watch YouTube and other internet videos that your friends have recommended or videos that they have posted. And you can watch it all on your TV.  

Boxee has a unique menu bar — Boxee calls it the "navigation menu" — that appears when you continue to press the menu/back key. This menu bar can be likened to a web browser bar.  Here you can type in a search term or web address, or access icons that take you to online movies, TV shows or your own files. There are submenus that appear when you hover over an icon so that you can go directly to photos, music or movies in the files app. Under the home icon, you can choose "recently played" to continue watching a video or the "watch later" queue.

The navigation menu bar is absolutely an asset, making it convenient and faster to get to what you want to watch. Still, it is unlike any other home theater component navigation and may be confusing for novice or nervous users.

Boxee's remote control has a unique and elegantly simple design.  It is two-sided.  The control side has two buttons and a navigational circle.  One button is to play/pause movies, music or slideshows.  The other, which looks like a menu button, is actually a "back" button that takes you to the previous menu screen and ultimately brings up a menu bar when pressed repeatedly. I found myself longing for a "home" button to take me immediately to the home screen.

The round navigation works differently depending upon the menu or task on screen.  It offers up/down right/left navigation in menus.  In the Boxee web browser, it moves the pointer around web pages.  While viewing movies or listening to music, it acts like the round control on an iPod — up and down for volume, right for play/pause.  Its changing uses will likely confuse a novice user. 

The two-sided remote is convenient but somewhat awkward. It took me a few tries to figure out how to hold it so that I wasn't squeezing letters on the keyboard when pressing buttons on the remote side.

While it's great to have a Qwerty keyboard, the keys are oddly aligned. You are ahead of the game if you've used a cell phone thumb keyboard, but will be challenged if you have big hands. Mostly, it's hard to use in the dark. I'm told future remotes will have backlighting.

There is a Boxee remote control app for the iPhone, and the "Reemote" for the iPad. With the Boxee box turned on, the apps connect automatically and offer you convenient keypads and navigation through gestures or buttons that are easy to use and better in the dark.

Some media players will find your files as soon as you connect them to the network.  Boxee finds your media libraries and asks you to specify the source to which you want to connect. In homes that have multiple computers, Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives and other media servers with large media libraries, this helps to reduce the number of files that are displayed.  

Boxee can scan your media libraries once, hourly or daily so Boxee can find the newest additions to your media library and put them at the top of your files lists. Scanning your libraries makes videos load faster and ensures that photo thumbnails appear when you open their folder.

Once you have scanned your libraries, Boxee does its magic. It uses the IMDB online movie database to find the cover art, synopsis, director and actors for your TV shows and movies. It then displays the cover art in a grid to make it easier to browse your collection.

During testing, Boxee retrieved the wrong information for a few of my movies. But it was easily rectified by clicking on the movie and hitting "identify." Here I could change the name of the movie to bring up a list of titles from which to choose. I picked "The Blind Side" from 2009 and removed the gun-slinging cover art and metadata from "Blind-Sided" that Boxee had mistakenly attached.

If Boxee can't find cover art for the video, it will create a still from the video itself to use as the cover art.  This worked well.  Many of my old “Twilight Zone” recordings were easier to recognize with the chosen still.  There was only one video with an indecipherable still. 

Proceed to Page 2: The Bottom Line on the D-Link Boxee Box