About 7 left at Garden City Booragoon store last night.
Cheap for brand new, down from its $299 rrp
Got one but not sure I need it as I use Apple TV and WD live for Netflix and Hulu but I understand the Boxee might do cool stuff to my 3tb drive full of media files?
still $45 more than Roku which in my experience has been a far superior product
We use one of these in our living room, running on the latest firmware & I think it runs solidly. We use ATV & a WD in the bedroom also & I can confirm the Boxee is much more stable than a hacked ATV with xbmc - it has a much easier to use interface & nice remote keyboard. But WD Live works best i think, basic & cheap but reliable.
Couch potato
I've had a boxee box for over a year now, and it's worked perfectly. Personally I found it better than the WD Live, but I'd never heard of Roku before (just googled it, looks cool)
Its my understanding that the Boxee can arrange my media files on external hard disk and then download missing cover art and film info?
Also is right that you cant get Hulu on it, or it just dosent have a Hulu dedicated app?
Any device that tries to access Hulu will need a VPN client as well. Which I believe Boxee does have an app for.
No, Boxee doens't have a Hulu app. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxee_Box under Reception.
It does have a VPN client though.
I thought that was what was meant by the initial statement
My bad.
We're on our second Boxee after the first one had a hardware failure. Is the hacked version much better than the standard software?
It's about the same, but it'll make you feel like a big rebel.
People don't buy this piece of S*** device, it's unstable, sometime freezed on startup. You can now install hacked firmware, but it's still slow. D-link no longer support or provide any update to the Boxee anymore. You better off getting the WD player instead, for $145 still not worth it.
Used mine for 3 years, no problems. Running the latest hacked firmware. Airplays,album and movie art - still nothing better out there after all this time.
Love it
You really need to check out XBMC then..
RaspBMC is pretty sweet as well, Raspberry Pi's are super cheap and can be made to use your existing TV remote via HDMI CEC.
I've been using the boxee with a boxeeplus hack for a few months now.
It's definitely more functional than hacked ATV with XBMC (I would not even consider normal ATV as a competition to these). I have installed repositories to go to Navi-X which basically allows me to stream anything for free (legality of Navi-X aside!). Also, with boxeeplus this acts a standalone torrent downloader so no need to have the computer on to download torrent. I also use hdmi splitter, to split one output to projector for movies, and one to DVI input on a 22 inch monitor which I use to control interface when listening to music (rather than having a tv or projector on) especially from pandora, spotify.
Netflix and tons of other apps are also there.
Disadvantages
1) can't handle 1080P mkv files greater than 8 to 9 gb (must be bitrate limit?) - doesn't make too much difference on my projector from 720P files.
2) has handshake issue with certain old display models like my sanyo projector. It used to work beautifully but now I have to "handshake" it with my TV before detaching hdmi and reattaching my projector. Somehow there is this initial handshake issue which prevents boxee from starting if connected to projector initially.
All in all, for a "function" oriented person like me, it can't be beaten atm.
Based on my previous experiences with a couple of these units, I'd say it's not even worth that…
It suffered from serious WiFi compatibility issues, couldn't connect to certain devices. The remote would die sometimes, and it's the only way to use the box. Playback was random on 1080p videos.
Granted, some of these issues may be fixed by now, assuming it's still being developed ??
You'd be better off sticking with your ATV or WD Live. Or if you're feel adventurous - grab a Raspberry Pi and put XBMC on it.