Full FeedAppletell preview - Boxee (Alpha)
A number of years back (or even more recently), you might have heard of XBMC (XBox Media Center). XBMC was a way for XBox owners to mod their units into a fully capable media center. That project has continued to progress, and has moved on since its XBox roots. While XBMC is still available, there is an interesting offshoot based on it’s code called Boxee and it’s making its way to a Mac near you soon.
Why soon? Well, that’s because Boxee is still in Alpha, so there are still some wrinkles to iron out here. But that’s not to say it’s not already shaping up to be an awesome application. More on this Alpha business later…
So what is Boxee? It’s like Front Row, with more options and a social aspect. The Boxee team calls it a “social media center.” It can play most of your movies, music, and pictures, as long as they aren’t shackled down with DRM. And, with 30 video codecs, Boxee can handle just about all of your media sitting on your hard drive.
But it isn’t limited to your hard drive. Boxee is great for browsing online media. There are RSS feeds built into the player that can provide you with hours of entertainment. Some examples are the Onion News Network, Ask A Ninja, Wine Library TV, CNN, etc. On top of that, you can enter your friends into Boxee. So, you can send and receive recommendations, and check out what your friends have recently watched. Best of all, if one of your friends watches a great movie, like 300, Boxee will attempt to find legal sources for you to watch related content. Things like previews or clips available on the net. It works for songs too. Boxee tries to find YouTube videos for songs your friends have listened too. And it all happens from completely legal sources. Awesome!
The interface is built to be used by a remote. While the developers consider the mouse to be the wrong interface for this program, you can enable it in the settings. That said, every function is accessible from the remote. They did this purposefully, so that, for example, you could connect a Mac Mini to your living room TV and control the whole media experience from the comfort of your couch with your Apple Remote.
Now, since it’s still in Alpha, there are some bumps in the road. For instance, when you play a video but decide to browse for more videos via the menu, it’s hard to get back to the video playing. The current video continues to play in the background, which is a beautiful feature on its own, but it seems there aren’t enough buttons on the Apple remote to get back to the current video. The only solution I could find was to enable mouse controls, and click on the video playing. I’ve also had some issues with the way controlling playback works. You have to click the play/pause button once to bring up the playback controls, and then again to actually pause a video. These are very minor problems that I’m sure will be cleared up, and honestly, I’m surprised I haven’t found a ton more, considering this is still in Alpha.
What’s really cool about the developers of Boxee is that they want to release this program to the Mac and Linux communities first. They feel the pain that Mac users experience when everything comes out for Windows first and is ported over to the Mac. Not so, this time. It’s ironic, considering the original project, XBMC, started on a Microsoft product.
Overall, I find Boxee to be an awesome application, but it won’t be replacing Front Row for me anytime soon. I love knowing which podcasts in iTunes I haven’t watched yet. Still, I think Boxee is for a different purpose. I love browsing for online media with its interface.
Now, about this Alpha business. It’s a closed Alpha, so you have to get an invite to try this app out. And I’m of the belief that you have to try a program out to really see what it’s like. You could sit here all day and read what I have to say about this great app, but it’s just not the same as trying it. Good news for you, I have some invites. The first 20 commenters to this article that express a desire to get in on the Boxee action will get invited. Just don’t forget to fill in the e-mail box. And don’t be surprised if the app hangs, crashes, or has some bugs. It’s Alpha after all.
Product [Boxee]
[Author’s Note: I want to make it clear that Boxee is actually a flavor of XBMC, as pointed out in the comments by XBMCfanboy. XBMC has branched off into a few other programs, and actually, XBMC is still available as well. So, if Boxee doesn’t get you excited, maybe one of the others will.]
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would very much appreciate a boxee invite.
on August 12, 2008 at 07:43 PM - LINKThanks,
-d
Jack,
Thanks for the great write-up. We’re glad you like boxee so much, and we’re paying attention to the feedback we’re getting from Alpha testers and reviewers like yourself. I wanted to mention a couple things to help you out, and hopefully get your readers even more excited about boxee.
like XBMC, boxee is open source which means it’s completely customizable and extendable. boxee applications and plug-ins will allow developers to turn boxee into a platform for their dream media center. Just as Firefox did for browsers, we want to do for media centers.
As far as getting back to the playing video, there’s a little “now playing” box in the top right of your screen, click on that to bring up the currently playing track. For functions like play/pause - there’s only so much we can do with the 6 button Apple remote; keyboard shortcuts include (r)ewind, (f)ast foward, (Space)play/pause, and (enter) for the OSD.
Thanks for the great write-up and we’ll keep in touch as things move from Alpha to Beta : ) We’ve also got an interesting contest coming up so I’ll tell you more about that in a few weeks.
-Andrew
on August 12, 2008 at 10:58 PM - LINKTeam Boxee
Hey Andrew,
It’s Jake actually, no big deal. Thanks for the tips; I must have just missed that Now Playing thing. I understand the limitations with the remote, no way around that. But I do see great things in the future of this app. I really love the plug-in idea. It would be awesome to see Boxee become a gathering of a ton of online media and recommendations. I’m really hoping that Hulu and the likes will join in. Thank you for helping make such a great program, and I can’t wait to see where it will go. Keep up the good work.
Jake Gaecke
on August 12, 2008 at 11:55 PM - LINKXBMC is not called Boxee now like you stated in your article. XBMC is still called XBMC as is available today for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows as well as the old Xbox from the original developers of XBMC, checkout xbmc.org
Boxee is a fork of XBMC source code and a totally seperate project from XBMC (other them basing their code on XBMC). Two other forks of XBMC is Plex (who recently joint with CenterStage) and MediaPortal. They all base their forks on XBMC because it is the best media center out there.
on August 13, 2008 at 04:28 PM - LINKXBMCfanboy, you are completely correct. Thank you for pointing out the mistake, I’ll fix it.
on August 13, 2008 at 11:44 PM - LINKNice review of Boxee. I would love to get an invite and try it out. Thanks.
on August 14, 2008 at 01:20 PM - LINKHi
If possible could you send an invite this way. I’ve been dying to test it on both my GNU/Linux boxes (gentoo and ubuntu).
Thanks in advance
on August 15, 2008 at 05:52 PM - LINKI would LOVE to get an invite to Boxee. I have watched many videos on the program, and am very excited to use it. Please send me an invite.
on August 16, 2008 at 08:15 PM - LINKI’ve just got an invite to try it out, and I must say, im LOVING this app. It just about beats Front Row in every way possible, and I would honestly say that this could even come as a major rival to Media Center on the Windows side once it gains some serious traction. I am extremely happy with this software thus far, and it’s only an alpha too!
Amazing work so far.
on August 18, 2008 at 11:57 AM - LINKThanks for your solid review of Boxee. The Techzilla podcast does a pretty good review for any readers interested as well. I am eager to see a release first hand aftr having XBMC for several years and finally being a mac convert I am eager to make it the heart of my media experience. Hope you have a boxee invite left for an early adopter of a surely good thing.
on August 24, 2008 at 07:03 PM - LINKVery nice write up, I agree that hearing and reading about this awesome program is not enough we need to try it. And if by any chance you have any invites remaining I would like to try Boxee, like…TONIGHT. Thanks
on August 24, 2008 at 07:15 PM - LINKI signed up for the alpha a long time ago, but no love for me. I’d really appreciate an invite. Thanks!
on September 13, 2008 at 11:32 AM - LINKvery cool. I’ve been holding off replacing my dead MCE 2005 PC I had in the entertainment center because of all the rumors that AppleTV was being updated. Since it doesn’t look like that will happen I’d love to try this on a Mac Mini.
on October 1, 2008 at 05:18 PM - LINKBTW, if you have an extra invite I’d appreciate one. Thx
on October 1, 2008 at 05:20 PM - LINKDo you have any more invites to send out?
on October 21, 2008 at 07:00 PM - LINKThis product sounds awesome.
Am I too late to get an “invite”?
on October 22, 2008 at 12:17 PM - LINKHopefully not to late to get INVITE…
I installed XBMC on my AppleTV and I am completelly impressed…
Made a whole “Hi-End” audio server arround AppleTV, Airport Extreme + shared HD… Using Tos link (optical out) to Meridian (external) D/A converter and connected out to a 50.000+EUR hi-end audio sistem…
And now I can listen to FLAC files and almost all other formats…
Regars
on October 31, 2008 at 05:11 AM - LINKAlex
I think I’m the 18th commenter… If you’ve still got an invite, that’d be awesome… Been waiting on the alpha list :(
on November 12, 2008 at 06:43 PM - LINKSorry, I am out of invites, but, you may have some luck by following this link
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=144
Good luck.
on November 12, 2008 at 06:46 PM - LINK