Boxee Review and Future Suggestions

If you haven’t heard of the amazing HTPC application called Boxee, you really are missing out on a lot. It is an awesome application, that is connected to web services, but still works as expected at accessing your locally stored media. I really recommend this for HTPCs. Boxee features an “App Library” where you can pick from apps you want to use and put them on a screen of your favorite apps. The “App Library” features services such as YouTube, BREAK, Revision3, Netflix (with a subscription), FailBlog, Pandora Radio, and many more. For the most part, these all work as promised, though I have noticed that YouTube is just a blown-up Flash version and BREAK doesn’t show all the videos on the site. The Netflix app is absolutely amazing, it’s better than most of the console versions and other ports because you don’t have to add movies and shows to your Instant Queue to make them show up. You can browse through the whole Netflix Instant Play library and the quality is actually surprisingly good. Some of the other features are the ability to tune into your Facebook and Twitter feeds and see videos that people have linked. I wish that the Facebook and Twitter feeds had more functionality, but I’m sure there are some third-party apps that are capable of doing this. Another thing that I really like about Boxee is that it’s open-source and multi-platform. I have Ubuntu, WIndows 7, and Mac OS X and it works perfectly on all three.

I do feel, however, that for an application which is most likely an application that you always want to keep open on an HTPC, it is missing some functionality. I think that if they want to keep the user from switching to other applications, they should add some more things, such as: e-mail, Google Reader sync (though there is a built-in RSS reader, I like to keep all my devices in sync), ability to actually browse through Facebook and Twitter feeds without third-party plugins, and YouTube via H.264 or other native formats. Otherwise, this application mostly fulfills all my needs for HTPC use.

Click here to get Boxee.

David – Senior Editor

Tags: boxee, break, facebook, htpc, netflix, pandora, tv, twitter, YouTube

This entry was posted on July 12, 2010 at July 12, 2010 and is filed under Feature, download, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.