Boxee and PlayOn working MUCH better after my CPU upgrade

I've posted before about PlayOn being the source of video for my kids around the house on their iPod touch devices working "OK" as long as they stream MP4's (but transcoding got choppy), and many folks have commented about Boxee's NHL Gamecenter Live video stuttering.

Those issues are now a thing of the past at my house.

I upgraded my PC running Boxee and PlayOn for $169 to a much faster setup and its paying off.

I chose the AMD Athalon II X3 445 Rana 3.1 GHz processor because it has the best price to performance ratio I could find.  I then paired it with a low-end overclock and core unlock board from ASRock (the N68C-S UCC board) and 4 Gig of Geil DDR3-1066 RAM.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn't unlock the 4th core (but I haven't given up yet), but I did successfully overclock it by 20%.

Streaming and transcoding via PlayON are much smoother now, as is the NHL GameCenterLive (in Boxee and in the browser).

Boxee Hulu Hack

A magician over on the boxee forums has posted a simple and easy way to get Hulu shows working on Boxee again!

All you need to to is:
   1) Download the file from the post (or click here)
   2) Rename it to hulu.js
   3) Put in the following folder:
           mac: /Applications/Boxee.app/Contents/Resources/Boxee/system/players/flashplayer/hulu.js
              linux: [Boxeepath]/system/players/flashplayer/hulu.js
              windows: c:\program files\boxee\system\players\flashplayer\hulu.js


Its working great on my Windows 7 computer running the latest Boxee beta.

Open letter to Hulu re:Boxee

Dear Hulu,

I have been a loyal Hulu user on my Windows PC running Boxee for 3 months. I love the ad supported model - especially  when "the following program is brought to you on Hulu with limited commercial interruptions" Thanks to Chase slate card (triplets?!) and the campy StateFarm insurance guy who decides he's tired and ready to die. 

That is until today. 

Why would you block Hulu on a windows computer just because I use Boxee as my browser instead of Firefox or Chrome?

Are your advertisers asking you to reduce viewership? 

Do you really think this move on your part makes users want to pay for a Hulu plus subscription?  

I want to watch shows on Hulu with advertising. I want to do it on my Windows computer running Boxee. 

Please tell me this was a mistake and Hulu is going to allow Boxee users to view Hulu content and optionally subscribe to Hulu plus for additional content and fewer ads for those who desire those features. 

For those of us who are willing to watch ads so that you are compensated for the content and advertisers capture our consumer dollars, let us watch Hulu content and your advertisers' content on our computers that run Boxee. 

I'm posting this email on my Blog and will gladly post your reply as well. Http://techhomeblog.blogspot.com

Thank you, 

Craig L. Davis

BoxeeBox will have Netflix!

The good folks at Boxee held quite a launch event tonight in NYC for the new BoxeeBox by D-Link.  Those who pre-ordered from Amazon.com are reporting their devices started arriving this morning.  According to the launch event, it will also be at major U.S. retail stores by Nov 17 (and reports from the great white north say its already on the shelves at Best Buy stores in Canada).

Major announcements at the event:

A very nicely revised user interface which looks great and has an AMAZING new search function to find just about any video, show, or movie "on the interwebs" (to quote Avner Ronon).

Currently only available on the BoxeeBox but coming soon for Windows, Mac, etc.

NetFlix will be on the BoxeeBox by the end of the year and...

in HD!

  Hulu Plus will also be on the BoxeeBox (no date announced)


Other cool content sources on BoxeeBox:

NHL GameCenter Live (Up to 40 out of market games per week)

Vudu's 9,000+ titles in HD (starting at $2.00 for 2 nights)



I kept saying I was waiting until NetFlix is on it, but I may just get one anyway now that its officially announced that NetFlix will be available on the BoxeeBox!  I need a content source on a second TV (we fired DirecTV about 3 months ago and refuse to pay $100 per month for cable or satelitte).  BoxeeBox will work perfectly for the second TV.

I doubt that I'll be ditching the HTPC I'm running Boxee on in the living room, though.  That's working great, and as soon as the 1.0 software is available, it will actually have more than the boxee box (except the cool remote) since the computer version will run NetFlix today.  Plus, its the computer that has all of our DVD's, Music, and Pictures on it anyway so it may as well also be the Boxee computer for the living room while its at it.

Congratulations Avner and team!

Vudu HD Movies come to Boxee!

Thats right, Boxee does it again!  Today, the Boxee Blog announced that they are adding Vudu's huge collection of on-demand, new release movie titles to Boxee users on Mac, PC, and the forthcoming Boxee Box (amazon.com preorders set to ship Nov 10th)


New Vudu users who signup via Boxee will even get a free movie to try it out.  Count me in.

Movies are $2.00 each for a 2 night rental.  Combine this with the huge library of free content already available, and NetFlix streaming titles at $9.00 per month and you've got better-than-cable choices for a fraction of the cost.

Users of the free Boxee software on PC and Mac will only get SD, but with the Boxee Box, users can get up to 1080p in Dolby Digital 5.1 (depending on your bandwidth):

• SD (480p) requires 1 Mbps
• HD (720p) requires 2.25 Mbps
• HDX (1080p) requires 4.5 Mbps

I know what I'm doing this weekend -- signing up for Vudu and watching a free movie on Boxee!

New AppleTV Ships (Thanks, but no thanks)

I'm actually surprised at the small number of folks bragging and tweeting about their AppleTV's arriving late this week.

It has started shipping and folks have started unwrapping them, but the most exciting news seems to be that you can backup the Apple SHSH with TinyUmbrella (the tool that allows you to revert back to an older iOS firmware after Apple stops officially allowing you to do so).  This probably means the device will eventually be jailbroken, and at that point, it may have some interesting and useful purpose to me.

Why "Thanks, but no thanks"?  For starters, the closed ecosystem of the device.  You can stream your local content to it, however, the only other source of content is Netflix and the iTunes store (for $0.99 per show or $3.99 per movie).

Sure, $99 is cheap, but it I had to pay a buck every time my kids watched a SpongeBob episode I'd be broke!  Why would I do that, when the content I want to stream is already available for free (as advertiser supported content) over at Hulu and other similar sites.  No streaming of NHL GameCenter Live + no MBL.com + no Hulu = no thanks (for me).

Maybe as a jailbroken device it will have a better justification for a place in my entertainment system.

Let us know what you think:

Can AppleTV do anything that we can't already do?
Does it do any of it better?

PlayON iPhone App in the App Store

PlayON.tv now has their app available in the Apple iPhone App Store! (app store link) (itunes link)

Starting today iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users can download the free PlayON Mobile app to their device.  This allows you to have nearly any streaming web content available in the palm of your hand from sources such as Hulu, MLB, NHL, Netflix, Amazon VOD, CBS, Comedy Central, TV.com, ESPN.com, ESPN3, CNN, PBS, PBS Kids, Fox News, SpikeTV, MTV and Vevo.  

Thats right, Hulu.com on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch without having to subscribe to HuluPlus.

The software requires the PlayON software for Windows running on a PC on your network (tdownload a free trial from PlayOn.tv -- after the trial users can subscribe to PlayON for $39 for the first year and $19 for each year thereafter).  Well worth it for giving us all this content on our iDevices, XBox360's, PS3's, Wii's, and any other DLNA compliant playback device.

So far the app looks good and is quite speedy (even compared to the previous HTML5 web interface on iDevices) and best of all, it works over WiFi or 3G.

Way to go PlayON!  Keep up the good work!