TekPr0n

In the past I have used a laptop hooked up to my stereo to provide music for parties or BBQ’s. After about 20 minutes there was always a gathering of people around the laptop, looking for the songs they wanted to play, turning the music up/down depending on the surrounding events, pausing it stopping it, ugh. It was usually chaos by hour two.

So, this brings me to Boxee.

Boxee is free, open-source software that allows your laptop to connect to your HDTV and provides a rich system to view your local media, streaming media from the net, even photos from Flickr. Boxeee allows you to navigate through all of your personal media using the network that the laptop or desktop is connected to via wireless. This will work over the network if you have a mapped network drive as well.

The part that I enjoy about this is that the interface is very nice looking, it is easy to read from a distance and it is very intuitive in finding your content, or pulling content from the internet because of how well done the interface is.

Boxee is currently in Alpha and I think it has the makings of a great media experience application, hopefully RTM will come soon. As far as I have seen it has exceeded the built in applications of the major operating systems, such as iTunes in OS X or Windows Media Player found in Windows systems. The difference between this application and those ‘other guys’ is that Boxee acts as another social networking integrator as well. You can add service aspects to your Boxee usage to your different social networks just settings a few items in your profile.

Twitter Integration:

• Tweet media you recommend – so if you like something you can recommend it to any of your Boxee friends and it will automagically send though recommendations to you Twitter followers as well.
• Tweet what your watching – You start watching something a Twitter is sent, this I fell could get a bit spam-like considering how fast I jump around on media.
• Tweet what your listening to- applies to music you are currently listening to. It would be useful if you were a club, or other venue.
• Tweet what you rate- It will show something you have watched, rated, and what that rating was.

You have the same options for Friend Feed and Tumblr as well, keeping your people up to date on the media you are experiencing, right from the Boxee application. All of this is done in the background so you don't have to compose the extra posts to your friends when you find out that the new movie trailer you just watched for (blank) is really cool looking.

Netflix Integration:

• You can authorize your Netflix account through Boxee as well, giving you the ability to stream the media from your Netflix account directly to the video player.

My Boxee Experience:

Initially I signed up for the application by filling out an email request form. Easy enough plus I want to know the latest when Boxeee changes, this is a great piece of software. After the download I was able to run into my account and add the above integration to my social networks. I chose to only Tweet right now, and only send out a Tweet when I recommend something. Even though Boxee has way more social network options, I don't like to spam my peeps.

After this I added my profile picture to my account and changed up my privacy settings. This changes who you get recommendations from, who I share mine with, as well as receiving notifications when someone follows you or if Boxee wants to talk.

So, now that I am done with the backend it was time to download the application and get it moving. Boxee is unique in that it is supported on all major platforms. It offers an application for Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu Linux. That's a change ;) I am currently running the lastest build of Windows 7, build 7201, and it runs like a champ.

During installation I found that Boxee also has an application for the iPhone, boy aren't you glad you have an iPhone ;) So I followed the link provided, it automatically opened my iTunes installation and gave me the prompt to add it to my iPhone on next sync, FREE of charge. This is used as the remote for the Boxee app if you wish to use it. Opening up the application for the first time was brilliant. The colors, which remind me of my page scheme, were nice on the eyes and made all of the content really pop out at you. The amount of content all wrapped up into this wonderful UI, make Boxee a really fun and interesting place to be.

As for the addition of your content and pulling content from the net, it is very easy. Anything from checking your Twitter Feed to watching internet TV from Revision 3, it is simple to find and once you find what you want, it is streamlined to play. Some of the feeds are still a on the alpha side however, larger streams are sometimes caught in loading limbo forever, and this could be looked at a bit further.

iPhone Remote:

The iPhone remote for the Boxee application is extremely will done, the accuracy and responsiveness of the remote is the best I have seen and it is easy to put your iPhone to sleep and bring it back up once you are done watching your movie or listening to you music, to continue controlling it with the phone. The remote has two options when using Boxee, either gesture or buttons.

Gesture StyleGesture: This consists of a Boxee logo in the middle of the screen. As you put your finger down and drag the logo around on the iPhone it emulates the movement of the on-screen mouse of the laptop or computer. This was very erratic and didn't give the user a very smooth experience. There is a way to change the sensitivity on this control, but I found it to be too frustrating to use.

Button StyleButtons: This offers you a simple D-Pad style layout and is way easier to use. I found this method to be quick and efficient and like I stated above very responsive, even though the system is running via the local wifi network it feels like an RF remote.

One thing I would like to see however is a small version of Boxee being emulated on the phone itself. I know it would probably hinder the performance though and this is probably why it hasn't been done. Though if you have a smaller TV than I do you might find it more challenging to read the TV itself from across the room and without a reference on the phone of what you looking at it might be a pain.

Finally, it comes down to how best to utilize this in your home or workplace. I am thinking about dedicating a machine specifically to this, which made me think. Would I use a set-top box if it was offered? For sure. For now though, I will do what I have done in the past and set up a cable to the TV and have it at the ready for the laptop I am running. I will also be adding a Seagate 500GB drive to this setup as well so I can easily upload media to the hard drive from my primary desktop and have those available in the Boxee world.

I would highly recommend taking a look at this application and its related technologies, it is very nice to have around and since you can be running any major operating system and still gain from this media experience everyone is prepared to start up.