Boxee Impressions from Canada

I started this Boxee review quite a while back but got side tracked due to work and computer issues. Now that I got things under control and have had time to play with Boxee I figured I'd complete the review because my good buddy Rob was asking me about it.

If one watches or reads any technical, business, or culture media one would likely have heard of the Boxee Box. Hell they had it in Men's Health gadget list a few issues back: you know the one with Olivia Munn in it ...

The Boxee Box hardware isn't cheap and dropping $200 on something for a review isn't in my budget. However, you can download and install Boxee for free on almost any computer that can be hooked up to a TV so I installed Boxee on my old laptop and it worked fine. I could even control it with a Andriod app on my phone as a remote control.

My first impression of the interface wasn't initially positive but after a few minutes I got use to it and it grew on me. At a glance Boxee is quite an application. It can access Netflix's streaming service, Vudu, television network streaming sites, and pull media from my main PC across my home network. With out a doubt the most robust media management application available that I know about.

After playing with Boxee for the last couple days I've made some discoveries. First off if you live in Canada your not going to use Vudu so you lose the ability to rent videos on demand which is something you can do with AppleTV, XBox, or the PS3. Another short coming is that the Netflix app will not work in Boxee for Canadian Netflix customers. It seems to work but you'll notice your accessing the American media catalog, which by the way is way better than the Canadian, and if you try to watch anything it just hangs when trying to connect to the Netflix servers. However, other than that it seems to work pretty well. Not a bad selection of television to pick from (even with living in Canada), some nice apps that still work for Canadians, and it seemed to stream across my home network PC to Boxee Laptop. It does hiccup and fail to stream some listed network television from time to time but no surprise there, you are accessing free internet content what do you expect for free.

In a nut shell if you live in the US I'm thinking this is a pretty good deal even if you shell out the $200 for the Boxee Box itself. However, for Canadians that is a pretty expensive price specially when you know Americans are getting a lot more for that money but if you have a spare computer around I say hook it up.

Final word if you like internet media such as The Escapist, Revision 3, YouTube, or even The Guild. Boxee brings all that to your big screen instead of your computer. For me that made setting up the laptop worth while.