Home ›

D-Link's Boxee Box

Issue 204

From Issue #204
April 2011

Jun 30, 2011  By Shawn Powers
 in
How does the Boxee Box stack up as a living-room entertainment unit?

Local Media, Boxee Style

Boxee always has handled local media in two ways. Users can access their filesystems directly and peruse their video collection folder by folder. Where Boxee really shines, however, is with its media library function. If files are named correctly (basically with the name of the movie and year), Boxee downloads genre information, cover art, ratings and other metadata. It's possible to browse your media collection like you'd look through movies at the rental store. Because Boxee downloads metadata, you even can sort your collection to find that perfect popcorn companion. Granted, the media scraper isn't perfect, but the Boxee Box gives you the ability to identify media it can't figure out automatically.

Boxee makes your media collection look beautiful. The initial scanning takes a long time, but the cover art and metadata are really nice.

Go to www.linuxjournal.com/video/review-boxee to see Shawn's video review of D-Link's Boxee Box.

Shawn Powers is the Associate Editor for Linux Journal. He's also the Gadget Guy for LinuxJournal.com, and he has an interesting collection of vintage Garfield coffee mugs. Don't let his silly hairdo fool you, he's a pretty ordinary guy and can be reached via e-mail at shawn@linuxjournal.com. Or, swing by the #linuxjournal IRC channel on Freenode.net.

______________________

Shawn Powers is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal. You might find him chatting on the IRC channel, or Twitter

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Canadian support

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 14:45.

I see on Boxee's website a lot of request for support of Canadian users. Posts have not been updated since April 2011 on this subject.

This is a real issue

I've got to say - this little

Brasil's picture
Submitted by Brasil (not verified) on Mon, 08/01/2011 - 03:43.

I've got to say - this little box has turned into the best streamer on the market. The initial firmware was not-so-hot, but Boxee has since made considerable improvements.

Mostly out of date information

HD's picture
Submitted by HD (not verified) on Tue, 07/05/2011 - 08:24.

Sorry to say but most of that information about both Boxee and XBMC are very much out of date even before this review was posted :(

I have read whole story of

craigwalker's picture
Submitted by craigwalker on Tue, 07/05/2011 - 02:08.

I have read whole story of this blog and after i read it i think the whole story of this blog is really very informative for us.I want some more information like this. Paint Zoom

I also want some information

cliffordtinker's picture
Submitted by cliffordtinker on Wed, 06/29/2011 - 02:18.

I also want some information about this,so i think this information is really very helpful for us,i want to say thanks for sharing this informative information. Genie Bra

White Paper
More Resources
Fabric-Based Computing Enables Optimized Hyperscale Data Centers

Today’s modular x86 servers are compute-centric, designed as a least common denominator to support a wide range of IT workloads. Those generic, virtualized IT workloads have much different resource optimization requirements than hyperscale and cloud applications. They have resulted in a “one size fits all” enterprise IT architecture that is not optimized for a specific set of IT workloads, and especially not emerging hyperscale workloads, such as web applications, big data, and object storage. In this report, you will learn how shifting the focus from traditional compute-centric IT architectures to an innovative disaggregated fabric-based architecture can optimize and scale your data center.

Learn More

Sponsored by AMD

White Paper
More Resources
Red Hat White Paper: Using an Open Source Framework to Catch the Bad Guy

Built-in forensics, incident response, and security with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Every security policy provides guidance and requirements for ensuring adequate protection of information and data, as well as high-level technical and administrative security requirements for a system in a given environment. Traditionally, providing security for a system focuses on the confidentiality of the information on it. However, protecting the data integrity and system and data availability is just as important. For example, when processing United States intelligence information, there are three attributes that require protection: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Learn more about catching the bad guy in this free white paper.

Learn More

Sponsored by DLT Solutions