Analogism

My spontaneous reaction when launching the new Boxee version is “Wow, the new version of Boxee surely is a massive update”. And the reaction is a very positive one!

The interface has got a major facelift since the previous version release. The design and layout looks much better and is more useful, and maybe even slightly more intuitive. It makes more sense in a way. It also runs better in general. The release comments stated that this new version has some performance improvements, and I do notice them. It feels less laggy, more light in a way. Internet streaming and caching information seems to work better, and I have not yet experienced an application crash like I did a few times with previous release.

But perhaps the biggest news in the new release is the successful integration with the content from the massively popular Hulu.com, a real cool website offering free streaming media of all kinds. Unfortunately, me being in Sweden, this feature is useless to me any anyone else residing outside the US. That being due to the fact that no videos can stream outside the US due to rights management. Hulu have simply not as of yet obtained the rights to stream content outside the United States, at least if you believe their website, which truly shines with its lack of updates. I have sent an email to them today asking about this, begging for at the very least, an update on the matter, but am yet to hear back from them.

There are some bugs, such as when you are running windowed mode, like I do on my computer right now, having it running in the background, it switches over to fullscreen mode every now and then. When a video ends or when you navigate, it simply switches to fullscreen for some reason. The second bug, a more annoying one, is if the internet streamed video is stalling, if the playback catches up to the stream buffer, the video simply stops and sends you back to the screen where you chose the video, instead of pausing and continue playback when the buffer is big enough. The pause method being what one might be used to from say… every streaming video player on the internet?

A third bug, if you can call it that, is that the interface is not built to run on a 4:3 ratio TV/Monitor. I installed the Boxee application on a computer using a standard 21 inch 4:3 monitor, and it looked… well, not good. Videos does not get stretched or in anyway corrupted, just the Boxee interface when you browse the application.

My first impression of Boxee has certainly passed and progressed more into a more aware, thought through evaluation of an application with some true potential. I still feel, for my personal use, the whole community style interaction is overkill. However, the way the application per se is developing, I can absolutely see this as an alternative to Front Row. The only downside to using Boxee would be that I can’t sync my iPod/iPhone to the media, as I can with the Podcasts I download with iTunes and the media I run through it. So for that purpose, it’s not a true winner. But still pretty freaking awesome!

Some other snags you occasionally run into are the feeds not loading properly. Like right now, none of the feeds on the starting screen are loading. Not even “Recently Used” or “Recently Added”, but mostly it’s the other two, “Recommendations” and “Friends Activity” that doesn’t load. As well as some internet streaming feeds, they just throw you an error message saying “Failed to load stream” or something like that.

Just look at those “Public Torrents”! Dick Tracy, Sherlock Holmes etc… They really did go the extra mile, that’s for sure. Built in Torrent client… dang. Just FYI, if you’re planning on using Boxee and its built in Torrent client, you should read up on Port Forwarding for your router, for best performance. I’ve tried some downloads, they’re still downloading, not the speediest of trackers, but yeah… Still Alpha.