[dooceswild]

Hello,

I've got an Atv2 with XBMC on it and I'm looking at getting a second box for my bedroom. I purchased and am evaluating a boxee box and I'm having a very hard time figuring out which one I like. I'm hoping I can get some people to chime in on some of the pros and cons.

Resolution: 1080p boxee vs 720p atv. I am not terribly concerned with this right now, but this may be an issue in the future. Right now my library is almost all ripped dvd's, so they aren't even in 720p. This does not mean I won't start getting high definition movies in the near future, but 720p seems good enough for me. Both of my tv's are 1080p.

Online library: Out of the box, neither really has a very good set of online content. I both like and dislike the fact the boxee runs flash. I seem to find the same library of online content on XBMC through the "Free Cable" plugin by bluecop, and I don't have to hassle with watching the advertisement and scrolling over to the fullscreen box and enlarging it. However, I haven't explored many apps on boxee, and I've found that navi-x works on both platforms. I like the way the online content is displayed on boxee better, but this is not a dealbreaker. I am looking for the box that will display the most amount of online (preferably ad free) content.

Rentals: I do not care about the rentals on either platform. This is mostly to stream free content for me, or my large library of ripped content.

Remote: I have two harmony remotes. I like that the atv can use this remote with almost no configuration. I would have to buy an IR receiver for the remote to work with boxee.

Size: I like the size of the atv.

Ease of use: I like the ease of use of boxee. This seems like much less of a hassle. It seems like with two atv's I'll just have to be updating the nightly build on two devices, installing plugins, etc multiple times. The software updates itself.

Futureproof: It seems to me that at any point, apple could push an update that will require me to restore my software and I'll be stuck with neither xbmc or boxee and just a plain ol atv.

AppleTV apps: they're coming.

Cost: Atv2 is half the price. I like that.

As you can see I've thought it out, but I'm just looking for other's insights.

[seand]

Boxee box has had lots of bumps in the road in terms of broken upgrades to the closed software. In order to appease their corporate partners for Netflix and Vudu, a lot of informal plug-ins like the bluecop ones you mentioned are out for Boxee entirely.

For close to what the Boxee costs you could just get Giada cube or similar Atom system HTPC and you have the flexibility to install XBMC, Boxee DIY, OpenElec, whatever you want. My two cents.

[chuckles]

Your comparison of XBMC on atv2 is currently of an unstable release on a new target (for the project)
Once a stable version is out
1. Should be no issues
2. You will not have to do nightly upgrades

[Set845]

Apple cannot force updates to tha ATV if you set it up correctly. Do you know about icefilms?

[infinus]

I actually had a boxee box and after so many frustrating problems with it I took it back and bought two apple TV's. I kept getting red screen of death errors, the library took forever to update with all of my content, when something did go wrong I'd have to re-scan my entire library and reapply system updates which for some strange reason would be gone when you had to do a hard reset. Also there was no advanced skin support and it didn't look as clean to me as anything on ATV.

[atari800]

.

[atari800]

I only used Boxee on ATV but not everyday....maybe twice total so I cant give expert opinion on Boxee Box

But why do you have to update every night? And how terrible is it to add a plugin?

Apple tv can be setup not to take updates