The Boxee Box by D-Link

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Just curious if there have been any early adopters of the new Boxee Box by D-Link and if they would like to share their thoughts and experiences with the box.

I have been using an apple tv with boxee installed for the past few months. I like it and it works well, but it doesnt do HD streaming or file playback. I have been using playon to access netflix, hulu, and plan to use MLB.tv when the season rolls around. I have cencelled cable and switched to running everything through the appletv and am hoping the boxee box will fill in the gaps.

I just bought the box on amazon. I picked up a 2tb drive for it as well to store my local media files. I was initially bummed the boxee box doesnt ship with hulu plus and neflix from the get-go, but with playon I think I can get by until it is official.

Anyone have the box? Do you like it? Was it worth the investment?

Thanks in advance.

 

[commanderkeen]

First time I hear of it. Be sure to keep us updated when you get it!

 

[system60]

Deffinitely over take this over google tv.

 

[CraigarTA]

Looks like Western Digital has some competition

 

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I received this yesterday afternoon and have been playing around with it since.

When the box was first started up, it had the beta firmware with the classic boxee interface. I had read the complaints with others about the new update/interface, but decided to do the update anyways. I don't understand why people are so upset with the change, it isn't a deal breaker. The former was much prettier in my opinion, but I didnt buy this to have a pretty homescreen.

The boxee box was simple to set up and get connected to my network. I have a 2TB WD Elements drive plugged in to the USB so it's playing files directly off that without a hiccup. If you go into settings and set up the boxee as a windows server, you can easily add files from your computer to the external HDD over the network. This is great, simply because it's playing the files directly off the drive instead of streaming them across your network. It has a great intro when starting up. It looks very professional and it's incredibly easy to access both local and online content. My non-technical girlfriend was able to pick up the remote and navigate it easily. The remote is very simple and the keyboard on the back is fantastic for entering information. My only complaint would be that the remote isnt backlit, and being gray it was a little hard to see in dim light. Everything on screen (menus, etc) look fantastic in HD, as does the playback of HD content.

What about online content you ask? It's pretty good depending on what app you are using, or what show you are watching. That's right, it has apps. Playback is nice on most, some take you to a website in the boxee browser, where I admit it is a bit of a pain to move the mouse cursor with the remote to select full screen. This will improve with time. Netflix is unavailable at this time, which angers a lot of people. We're told it's coming by the end of the year. If it takes time, I am OK with that. The hold up isnt on boxees end, it's from the other companies. You cant blame boxee. Hulu also isnt available, but should be soon as well. There are ways to get both of these on your boxee box NOW. You can use a service called playon, to access both hulu and netflix on boxee. There is a free 15 day trial, which should be fine until netflix is delivered. otherwise, Playon is $39.99 yr/19.99 after. So if you're considering the cost against cable...39.99yr PlayOn, 7.99 Hulu+, 9.99 Netflix..your cost is about $21 a month. basic cable alone is $50+. I have canceled cable completely at this point. I dont mind using playon in the mean time, even though I dont have a shiny app from boxee to use it now. But I will soon. I like being able to control the content that comes up on my TV.

Another great benefit is adding repositories. Adding a repository to boxee (quite easy-just entering in a web address) can add hundreds of new apps and capabilities to the boxee box. This means new shows, podcasts, music, channels, sports, etc. There is a thread on the boxee forums about all of the active repositories.

It's a great box so far. Being an early adopter of any product, it's going to take some updates to get it 100%. It's not perfect YET, but it is getting there. I am completely happy with choosing this box over cable or satellite, even with it's shortcomings. I know the boxee staff is working very hard and taking suggestions on what we want out this piece of equipment. This most likely wont be the perfect product for Grandma to set up. But, if you can use a computer at work, you can use this.