2012-02-09, 21:50
Just my experience and opinions. YMMV.
I was running all my stuff off a PS3, but Cinavia finally drove me away.
I bought the ATV2 about 6 months ago. At the same time, I upgraded my router to the ASUS 'black diamond. I also bought the Seagate Black Armor 2TB to hold my 'stuff'.
Ran the jailbreak and installed NITO/XBMC. Wired it all up and got horrid results. EVERYTHING stuttered and buffered. Not happy. Went thru much testing/changing and couldn't get any satisfactory results. Finally, for the hell of it, I took out the new ASUS and plugged in my old NetGear wireless G router...and...wow...95% of my stuff worked. Wireless. Returned the ASUS and bought the NetGear 750. Been running okay for months.
Kept current with updates to XBMC and the newer the software versions I got, the more files started to buffer. Got more and more frustrated. I understand the ATV2 processor is not the greatest, but still, progress seemed to be going backwards at times.
2 weeks ago, I decided to try the competition. I bought the Boxee Box. Got it home and was told the latest, newest, version 1.5 software was available. Forced update. Let it go, and when it restarted, I was able to scan and get set up. Scrapers found everything and I was ready to go.
The good. It plays everything I had, stutter free. Everything. Wireless. Some users reported problems with stuff, but not me. It was awesome. What a difference. I read that the software was heavily based on XBMC,so this just reinforced the idea that the ATV2 just doesn't have enough horsepower.
Boxee also has lots of bells and whistles, but I only really used Pandora. It did not perform as well as the XBMC version did for me. Lots of dropouts.
The bad. The Interface is juvenile. Clunky. Ugly. Minimal customization. A forced update broke more things than it fixed. Namely subtitles and scraping. Not good. The software is not open, so changes are slow in coming. It just felt like a high school senior science project. Surprising it is sold on a commercial hardware platform.
My final thought on the Boxee was that the hardware rocks, but the software needs lots of work.
I am returning the Boxee today and plugged the ATV2 back in today. I did discover that Eden beta 3 is out. I loaded it and am running well so far.
I love the interface. I love the whole development group. I just prefer the ATV2 for now. There is lots of room for improvement, but I have much more faith in you guys then the Boxee group.
So I am sticking with XBMC for a while. Thanks guys! Love the product and appreciate the effort. Can't wait to see what comes next.
Michael
tl;dr Boxee: great HW, poor SW. ATV2/XBMC: poor HW, much better SW.
I was running all my stuff off a PS3, but Cinavia finally drove me away.
I bought the ATV2 about 6 months ago. At the same time, I upgraded my router to the ASUS 'black diamond. I also bought the Seagate Black Armor 2TB to hold my 'stuff'.
Ran the jailbreak and installed NITO/XBMC. Wired it all up and got horrid results. EVERYTHING stuttered and buffered. Not happy. Went thru much testing/changing and couldn't get any satisfactory results. Finally, for the hell of it, I took out the new ASUS and plugged in my old NetGear wireless G router...and...wow...95% of my stuff worked. Wireless. Returned the ASUS and bought the NetGear 750. Been running okay for months.
Kept current with updates to XBMC and the newer the software versions I got, the more files started to buffer. Got more and more frustrated. I understand the ATV2 processor is not the greatest, but still, progress seemed to be going backwards at times.
2 weeks ago, I decided to try the competition. I bought the Boxee Box. Got it home and was told the latest, newest, version 1.5 software was available. Forced update. Let it go, and when it restarted, I was able to scan and get set up. Scrapers found everything and I was ready to go.
The good. It plays everything I had, stutter free. Everything. Wireless. Some users reported problems with stuff, but not me. It was awesome. What a difference. I read that the software was heavily based on XBMC,so this just reinforced the idea that the ATV2 just doesn't have enough horsepower.
Boxee also has lots of bells and whistles, but I only really used Pandora. It did not perform as well as the XBMC version did for me. Lots of dropouts.
The bad. The Interface is juvenile. Clunky. Ugly. Minimal customization. A forced update broke more things than it fixed. Namely subtitles and scraping. Not good. The software is not open, so changes are slow in coming. It just felt like a high school senior science project. Surprising it is sold on a commercial hardware platform.
My final thought on the Boxee was that the hardware rocks, but the software needs lots of work.
I am returning the Boxee today and plugged the ATV2 back in today. I did discover that Eden beta 3 is out. I loaded it and am running well so far.
I love the interface. I love the whole development group. I just prefer the ATV2 for now. There is lots of room for improvement, but I have much more faith in you guys then the Boxee group.
So I am sticking with XBMC for a while. Thanks guys! Love the product and appreciate the effort. Can't wait to see what comes next.
Michael
tl;dr Boxee: great HW, poor SW. ATV2/XBMC: poor HW, much better SW.
