Yes I love my Boxee Box, but I do have a few complaints. The Boxee Box is a new video streaming device from Dlink which uses the Boxee software that has been around for awhile. The Boxee software has been very popular as simple way to turn a computer into an easy to use media center. The software has a large number of loyal users. The idea for Boxee is to create a very easy to use interface to bring web based video to the big screen. When you unbox your Boxee it comes with everything you need right out of the box. Let me tell you I was happy to get an HDMI cable free inside the box. Wish more companies would include a cable as they do not cost that much as some electronic store salesmen would lead you to believe. Once you hook up your Boxee you are greeted with the load screen and you will require a firmware update once connected to the Internet it just take a few minute to get the latest firmware. Once the Boxee reboots you are greeted with the main menu which allows access to online content or you can connect hard drives or SD cards with your own video files. It a simple interface and most users will be able to get around without much fuss. The Boxee also has a section filled with apps, my favourite being the weather app and Vevo for music videos. After playing around with the Boxee Box for about a week I have to give it a high rating and I think this is a great leap in technology for those who want to cut their cable. The only challenge right now is with content. The Boxee did a good job of finding my favourite shows, but my understanding is that some content owners are going to block devices like Boxee and Google TV from playing content on you TV. Let’s hope media giants realize that there is a new market and will support these types of device. Would hate to see consumers have to search for pirated movies and TV shows. As the Boxee Box is a first generation device it does have some flaws and did not seem that it was ready for a full retail release. It seems a little beta at times. The biggest problem I had with my Boxee was that the WIFI setting had my network at zero bars even though the WIFI DSL modem was right in the next room and no other device had any problems with my network. It turned out that this was problem with Boxee and a firmware update was going to arrive shortly. With a very active user community getting feature on Boxee and apps will not be that difficult. This is a plus for a product unlike Apple TV we will see a large number of apps hitting Boxee. The Boxee is a great media player and for online content it makes it easy to play your favourite TV shows. The Boxee uses a Web Kit browser and playing most flash based content through the browser is not that difficult. Those who want to play web content on the big screen are going to love Boxee however be warned that there are still many issues that need to be resolved and the Boxee team will be putting out updates as they correct a few key problems. Now that I have Boxee in my cable free home I do think cord cutters are going to want a Boxee Box to call their own.
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