Yesterday I began to think about moving from the AppleTV in our home, to something else. My AppleTV (running XBMC) has been faithfully playing my DVD’s for a few years, however it’s showing signs of age and stutters when playing HD movies. I didn’t want to get locked into Apple again, so I chose not to upgrade to the newest AppleTV version.
I decided to try out Boxee.
What is Boxee?
Boxee is free software you can run on your computer that will let you watch Movies, TV shows, your DVD’s, pictures and music.
Dlink also took this software and made a Boxee Box – (pictured right) a standalone piece of hardware with the Boxee software imbedded, ready to go. It currently sells for about CAN$200 at our local Future Shop and simplifies the setup and usage. It will connect to the Internet through your network both wirelessly and by network cable (recommended) and comes with a great remote for controlling it.
Not having a Boxee Box I chose to set up the software on a spare computer.
Boxee Setup & Configuration
If you choose to run Boxee on your computer then you must have some sort of video connection to your TV. It’s unlikely your TV has a VGA input like a monitor, but these days many computers have an HDMI port. I used a small form factor Acer Aspire AX1700-1710B desktop computer with an HDMI connection, Running Windows 7. It’s not in the same room as the TV so I purchased a 50 foot HDMI cable to snake around the perimeter of the room. Even with a cable this long there’s no loss of signal.
Plug one end of the HDMI cable in the computer and the other in the back of the Panasonic TV, select the HDMI input on the TV and video turned up immediately.
Installing Boxee
Installing Boxee is as easy as setting up an account at www.boxee.tv, downloading the software for your operating system, and following the basic prompts during installation. I ran into no glitches or problems at all.
Getting Audio through the HDMI cable
Important! Windows 7 does not route audio through the HDMI port by default, so you must go to Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Manage Audio Devices, and change the default audio connection to your HDMI port. (you can also just press the Windows Key and type “manage audio” and select it from the menu list)
Boxee Remote
Since the computer was not even in the same room as the TV for me, a standard infrared remote was not an option. Boxee solves this with remote control Apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch or any Android phone.
On the Apple App Store, search for “Boxee” and download the free Boxee Remote App. Once the icon appears on the screen, click and it will search for a Boxee server on the network. Finding and connecting was automatic once you’ve selected your Boxee host. Of course, the software must be running in order to connect to the boxee host.
I also downloaded this Boxee Remote App to my Samsung Galaxy S Android phone, from the Android Marketplace – just in case. You can always control it using a mouse from the PC as well.
Adding Boxee Sources
If you store your movies on an external hard drive, like I do, then you’ll need to add that to the list of sources Boxee looks at. I found the easiest way was to do this on the computer, rather than by remote on the TV.
From the main menu go to Settings, Local Sources, then Add Sources on the right. Boxee will automatically go and find any Windows Shares you have on your network. If your Movie drive is shared out you can simply select if from the list. Boxee will scan the contents (which may take a while) and your movies will begin to appear under the My Movies section.
Watching Boxee Movies
Watching movies is just a matter of selecting Movies from the main menu. Clicking the left arrow on the remote will bring up watching options and Boxee is pretty good a finding and categorizing you movie genres. Playback is smooth although the pause/stop buttons on the iPod Touch App are pretty small and hard to find and push correctly. Another strange thing is that on the Android app the “back” button is the down arrow(?).
Overall I’ve been pleased with the result and will continue to test it out for glitches and how easily it finds newly added movies. (it scans your movie folder at a predetermined schedule).
Find out more about Boxee
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