So, I’ve had my Boxee TV for about a week and a half now and gotten a chance to play with all the features. I can start by saying the sleek, black box looks great with the other sleek black boxes under my home theater screen… much better than it’s predecessor.
It was easy to set up, in theory. I plugged it in, and it immediately asked me to connect it to the interewebs for an update… I tried to hook it up to the WiFi. NOPE.
I tried a couple of times, then in my first-world despair, unplugged the ethernet cable from my PS3 and did the update that way. After that update, I was able to connect to WiFi.
That’s right. Download the update to hook up to the internet. If you only use WiFi, you’re gonna have a bad time from the get go with this motherfucker.
Anyways, after I plugged in my antenna and all that jazz, I had to reboot again and things were working great. I don’t normally watch college football, but it was so pretty, I just had to fucking do it.
I also checked out the Netflix app. It’s Netflix, what do you want? The Youtube app is better than PS3’s so I wasn’t disappointed with that in the least. They also had Vimeo and a couple of other things I can’t remember and no one will ever use. I just wish you could access network drives from this thing. An update maybe?
A big draw of a lot of Boxee folks is the 15 dollar a month unlimited cloud DVR. For some reason it just started recording 2 and Half Men for me… I don’t like that show that much. But I was able to watch my recordings online as well, this is pretty cool. However, if you don’t live in a major city such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia or Washington DC, the recording service won’t be available until at least 2013… AT LEAST. And knowing Boxee’s history, don’t hold your breath.
And oh yeah, that fucker goobles your bandwidth like Pac Man. I learned this trying to play Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. If you intend on doing any gaming at all in your house. Unplug the Boxee.
Yes, that’s right. There’s no power button on this thing.
At the end of the day… I was impressed. The Bears have never looked so good on this 92″ screen. Now to actually get some friends to come over and watch.
If you don’t have cable. There’s no reason to not buy this thing. But here’s hoping that they improve upon this. It’s still in beta (the software) technically, so expect a lot of changes.
EDIT: Oh yeah, on my unit’s remote, I don’t have the Vudu or Netflix stickers.
Wolfen Films 