[mythtv-users] Thoughts on the upcoming Boxee Box as a possible frontend?

David Meixner dpmeixner at gmail.com
Tue Sep 28 15:08:59 UTC 2010


On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Matt Emmott <memmott at gmail.com> wrote:

> I pre-ordered mine at Amazon as soon as it was available (
> http://www.amazon.com/The-Boxee-Box-by-D-Link/dp/B0038JE07O/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285370067&sr=8-1). It has the following noteworthy specs:
>
> * Intel Atom CE4100 SOC which supposedly "is capable of handling 2
> simultaneous 1080p video streams. It supports H.264 video, 3D graphics, and
> Adobe Flash 10." (http://liliputing.com/tag/atom-ce4100 )
> * 802.11 n/g/b
> * Support for up to 32GB SHDC (no disk onboard apparently)
> * Netflix streaming
> * Kickass 2-sided bluetooth remote with nav pad on one side and QWERTY on
> the other
> * $199
>
> I'm not very familiar with the CE4100 and most searches turned up more
> articles on the Boxee Box, but I believe I saw on Engadget that it supports
> VAAPI, which I see is in preliminary support in .24. Wow that was a run-on
> sentence. Is anybody familiar with this chip and its feasibility with Myth?
> If it's an Atom then it's x86 code, which should IMHO make it Myth-friendly.
>
> Anyways, the obvious questions besides hardware are A) What OS is it
> running and B) Will it be easy to get a shell and install apps? Boxee's
> testing and builds have always favored Ubuntu so there's hope, but with
> Netflix and who knows what other "jailed apps" on board, I have to wonder if
> their media partners have asked them to lock things down a bit. Any
> thoughts?
>

In my quest to give up cable, I found Boxee + MythTV + Netflix to be a great
solution.  Basically, I use a MythTV backend to record OTA HD content and
use Boxee as a "light" frontend.  I rename my MythTV recordings to the
format <Show Name>.S##E##.mpg, and Boxee's able to identify the episode and
automatically add it to my TV shows.  Whatever I can't get OTA, Boxee pulls
in from the web, and the great thing is that all the shows are in one place,
regardless of the source they come from.  This setup doesn't give you things
like comm skipping, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for the fully
integrated solution that Boxee provides.  This may not be of ineterest to
you if you're a cable subscriber, but if you want to ditch cable and still
watch The Daily Show, I've found it to work really well.

Sorry if this is a litte off topic from the original post.  I'm running
Boxee on my desktop, but this should be doable on the Boxee Box, and I can't
imagine they would ship the thing without Netflix support.
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