Some time ago I reviewed the Boxee Box and the verdict was that Boxee Box was the best media player / streamer box I have ever tested and I still stand by that verdict. It is! However, I bought it to replace my beloved HTPC (see hardware here and here, software here) and unfortunately it fell short of achieving that goal. Let’s dig a little bit and find the reasons…
Let me reiterate my goal: The reason I bought Boxee Box was to replace my trusted HTPC with something smaller, easier to use and not that power hungry. I use my HTPC in order to access HULU, Netflix and, very important for me, the local content consisting in hundreds of DVD and or Blu-ray discs legally purchased and ripped to be accessible for instant view around the house. While in theory Boxee Box is capable of doing everything I want, I found myself after almost two months of usage that it cannot deliver the level of customization I want for a device in the living room. Here is why:
1. Lack of a meaningful (for me) way to organize my offline collection. I use Media Browser add on for Windows Media Center and it is an incredible piece of software ( donated and if you are using it, consider doing so as well to help more versions coming). Media Browser can work with your own metadata and DVD covers, can also organize your content based on categories and allows multiple network shares to be added under one category and in its latest incarnation 2.3.0 is extremely fast. There are many themes that look gorgeous and you can create your own as a plug-in.
Boxee Box can either show your offline content in a huge list (eventually ordered alphabetically) and that’s about it. You can also access the network shares directly but if you have hundreds of titles you’ll have to know which movie is located in what network share. Getting the metadata is slow and error prone and, in its current incarnation it doesn’t cache the covers / thumbnails so the retrieval is very slow. Media Browser caches the covers locally and, if you are like me and used a SSD drive, the experience is nothing short of amazing. Also, going back to the fact that retrieving metadata is error prone, I had a kids movie classified as porn and the cover downloaded appropriately. Good thing I caught it before my son did 
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2. Lack of a reasonable trust in Boxee’s team promises. Don’t get me wrong, I am a software developer myself and I know exactly how it works, especially when you have a small team. But waiting until December 31th to figure out that Netflix won’t come for ONE MORE MONTH even if promised by the year’s end tells me that the marketing department has some important issues to fix as a group…Enough said!
3. Rushing new features with improper testing. Again, I am pretty sure that’s also due to the questionable decisions made by Boxee’s marketing department (or person). However the PR effect is disastrous and while I am willing to put up with it just to play with a new toy, my family doesn’t. My wife initially really liked Boxee Box but it is just not stable enough for day to day family use.
All the above mentioned reasons made me decide to return Boxee Box back to Amazon. I am no longer confident that they’ll bring Netflix by the end of the month or that the box will become stable in a reasonable time-frame. Again, I still stand by my verdict that Boxee Box is the best media streamer I have ever tested (even if just because most media streamers suck). It’s just that, for me the functionality is not on par with my expectations and I prefer a HTPC instead. And, for the ones among you that don’t want to tinker, Microsoft announced upcoming Media Center embedded boxes. More expensive than Boxee Box but I am willing to pay to have things done my way.
For the bedroom, for now I decided to use two boxes. It is inconvenient but both boxes together are actually smaller than a Boxee Box and also cheaper. For local content a Western Digital WD TV Live Plus 1080p media player while for web content a ROKU XD box featuring Netflix, HULU Plus, Amazon Video on demand and VUDU plus many others. Less than $200 and working perfectly together, integrated with my trusted Harmony 880 remote.
