Super Penguin NET

I’ve recently have looked at various multi-media solutions for my home TV. One I came across called Boxee. Boxee is built on XBMC. I remember when XBMC which stands for XBox Media Center when it was first introduced back for the first generation XBox. Boxee does contribute back to XBMC to help further the project. Since XBMC first came out it has changed a lot. Now it is cross platform on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Boxee is the same and works on all 3 platforms.

I have tried Boxee on both Linux (Ubuntu 9.10) and Windows 7. I ended up using it on Windows 7 as my primary use. The issue with using it in Linux or other OS’ for that matter is the quality of video’s. If you have ever watched a video on a large LCD TV on Linux or an Operating system before Windows Vista the quality can be blocky and not look as good as expected. In windows vista/7 it has this technology called VRM9 which does some very nice video rendering. So in my personal recommendation no matter how much you are a fanboy for this usage I would recommend using Windows 7. Also I would recommend a Dual Core 3.0Ghz or better CPU, 2GB or more of Ram, and a decent video card to do hardware video rendering/decoding. With these requirements you should be able to watch HD video’s without any issues.

What I really like about Boxee is it’s integration with everything. I use it for Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, my personal video libraries and much more. In the browsing for TV Shows it will list shows available on Hulu as well so if you don’t have it you can still watch it. It also lists them from Syfy and many other channels that have internet feeds. There is a built in Netflix app to stream movies from netflix. It works with the recommendation system and such. The pandora app in it can login to your account and play your stations as create new ones. The quality on all these feeds is outstanding. The quality matches as if you streamed directly from the sites in full screen.

Boxee takes a different approach and ties in with social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It can sync with Digg, Flickr, Facebook, Netflix, Tumblr, Friendfeed, Facebook, and Twitter. The program is still in beta and needs a bit of work. It does get a few movies titles wrong every once in a while.

If you are looking for a new media center I would definitely recommend using Boxee. I think it’s better then any other media center software I have used out there.

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.