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Internet Explorer posted:Except a Boxee is $200. I think it would be difficult to build a custom-made HTPC for that price. Can't get Netflix on Boxee right now either  As I said, it's missing applications that are as robust as Boxee's.
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Nov 12, 2010 02:16
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Internet Explorer posted:Except a Boxee is $200. I think it would be difficult to build a custom-made HTPC for that price. It's possible but requires a certain amount of work and knowledge. Just to check whether it's possible I gatheres all needed HTPC parts in Newegg and ended up with the grand total of $198.95 plus shipping (no KB, mouse or remote included though). For great many people an out-of-the-box solution is just better. If the software finally works it'd be a great thing, XBMC is just infuriating in many ways.
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Nov 12, 2010 02:25
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mastershakeman posted:Doesn't it have a terrible laggy interface? Yes. The interface is really really lovely on WDTV.
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Nov 12, 2010 02:33
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Hob_Gadling posted:It's possible but requires a certain amount of work and knowledge. Just to check whether it's possible I gatheres all needed HTPC parts in Newegg and ended up with the grand total of $198.95 plus shipping (no KB, mouse or remote included though). I'd love to see this parts list, thanks! And without a remote, that does not equal this device. My impressions So far the BB has had it's ups and downs, right now my local media playback is limited to the file browser as it is still indexing my library (I hope, no way to check progress as far as I can tell) so, so far with local content it's on par with my popcorn a-100. However, it does have a plethora of online content to peruse including a huge number of TV shows with limited episodes available (think Hulu, sometimes there's every episode of a show, sometimes only 5-8) as well as access to a bunch of other content I've yet to even grab. Sometimes the video player doesn't automatically expand the video playing window (so you see the whole website) but you can click the full screen button on the player to expand it. Something I would expect to get smoothed out with an update. I'm willing to accept the latency in indexing local content as I do have a bunch (4K+) but I do expect it to be fully updated within 24 hours otherwise I'm going to be a little miffed. Hardware wise this thing is pretty awesome. Remote feels great, solid keys and the weight is very light but sturdy feeling. Actual size of the box is much smaller than I expected which is nice, it's a bit taller than my 360 and fits well with the rest of my home theater. Right now, if I had to give it a rating it would be a 7.5/10 but I'd expect some of my qualms to be fixed in the near future with some software updates. Comparatively, I'd give my old popcorn a-100 about a 5/10 to give you a reference. At the end of day 1, I would buy this product again without a doubt, potential is high and the early adopter burn is pretty low.
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Nov 12, 2010 02:48
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Fatal posted:My impressions I don't know if Boxee Boxes are still running the pre-1.0 version, but in that one you could see your progress by checking the left sidebar in the view of whatever its indexing.
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Nov 12, 2010 02:59
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I connected a separate USB HD to the box hoping for faster indexing but it refuses to display it. Has anyone else had this issue yet? If I go to sources it says a USB storage device has been connected but does not show it in the list. I can connect USB sticks and SD cards just fine, but this drive refuses to appear.
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Nov 12, 2010 03:05
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My initial impressions of the Boxee were of amazement. That was last night, when I was first playing with it. Then, today, I saw there was an update and went to apply it, only to be greeted with an 0x314 error. Now I'm some kind of hell. Factory resetting the box forces me to do an update. When it tries to update, it hangs on "Downloading Now" at 0%, saying, "Connecting..." I can factory reset it all I want and get the same results, every time. Unskippable updates are not fun. I'd try wireless over wired but the wireless will only connect to my router if I've downgraded it from N to B/G and disabled encryption. Even then, it says there's no internet connection. If you're on the fence, I'd say lean towards something else or wait a bit. EDIT: After around 25 factory resets (I'm persistent), it stopped requiring me to download the new version. I'm back to 0.9.21.14131 in all of its working glory. Beardless Woman fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 03:26
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mastershakeman posted:Doesn't it have a terrible laggy interface? Since last december I've had my WDTV live in the living room with a wired connection and I've never had any problems. It's worked beautifully and played drat near every format I can throw at it. However, this month I got a wireless n usb adapter and moved it to another room. I got a cheapy adapter, and with the wireless being not so great, yes, the menu can be laggy. But based on my experience with it wired, I blame the adapter, not the WDTV.
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Nov 12, 2010 04:40
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Anal Volcano posted:I don't know if Boxee Boxes are still running the pre-1.0 version, but in that one you could see your progress by checking the left sidebar in the view of whatever its indexing. It's running 1.0x so there isn't a left sidebar anymore, just a top bar. I'll go check to see if it shows anything though, it's been sitting for a few hours.
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Nov 12, 2010 04:56
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The more I play with this thing, the more annoyed I get. The Watch Later list doesn't seem to work at all. As I understood it, it was supposed to automatically include new items that show up in your favorite shows. It doesn't. But even using it manually doesn't work properly - anything I remove from it causes the whole list to duplicate. Tried to watch a Korean film with subtitles, it defaulted to the Korean subtitles and has no option to select the English ones. Apparently if an .mkv has subtitles at all, they will use them and they can't be disabled. The two bugs I ran into last night are still there, and now there are new bugs and newly missing functionality (marking as watched/unwatched, listing local content first, music/photos, sorting files, constant monitoring). The hardware seems great; haven't had a single problem yet. But the software clearly needed more time in the oven. I haven't used Boxee before - I hope they're the sort of developers that update regularly and fix poo poo, because as it is this thing is seeming less useful by the hour. I'm sure I'll feel better about it once I sit down and watch some shows instead of just poking it to see what's broken, but right now I'm kinda disappointed. LittleCat fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 05:06
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Fatal posted:I'd love to see this parts list, thanks! And without a remote, that does not equal this device. True, and the parts list is not optimal by any means. But for comparative purposes: GIGABYTE GA-MA78LM-S2H mobo Patriot 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz APEX DM-317-A case + 275W power I had an open box 500G hard disk when doing the parts picking, but: Newegg.com posted:SAMSUNG HD502HJ has been removed from shopping cart due to quantity limitation/insufficient stock. Replace it with: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250318AS 250GB and the total price becomes $214.95 (even less if you're willing to use a 80Gb drive but come on). If you can live with 1G of memory there's a variety of $18 1G DDR2 sticks available, total price being $200.95 + delivery. As operating system you're forced to use Linux since there is no way you can add a Windows license into the mix without blowing the budget. Since it's a computer I'd rather have a wireless keyboard (ione KBP20 with integrated joystick that functions as a mouse, $31.99 extra) than a remote but that's just me. A remote that works with both XBMC and Linux is $21.23 more (AVS Gear HA-IR01SV). So, a grand total of $222.18 for the cheapest possible build (everyone has a keyboard they can borrow for installing OS, right?) I'd throw in another G of memory and buy a bigger disk straight off if I were to actually build this, raising the price by about $70. Maybe throw in wireless for $10 more. Does Boxee Box wireless-n work well enough to be usable? There's no way I can sell 10 meter CAT5 cables to women in this family. Also, does it index from USB hard drives or memory sticks? Edit: Also, the big one: does it do 1080p smoothly? Hob_Gadling fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 05:22
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I've gone ahead and rolled our new boxee box back to 0.9, suddenly the hard drive is working with it without a problem. Some of the UI such as searching is not as nice as 1.0, and the whole interface is not quite as optimized, but so far it's an improvement. I guess I will see how it goes since I can always go back to 1.0 if needed. Maybe by the time I need to do that they will have a nice 1.1 ready to go.
Nall fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 07:56
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Hob_Gadling posted:Does Boxee Box wireless-n work well enough to be usable? There's no way I can sell 10 meter CAT5 cables to women in this family. Also, does it index from USB hard drives or memory sticks? It definitely indexes from USB hard drives, USB sticks, and SD cards. Wireless N is useable, but I haven't tried it with 1080p streaming, and they recommend wired for HD streaming. 720p works beautifully, don't have a 1080p TV to try it on.
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Nov 12, 2010 08:02
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Hob_Gadling posted:Edit: Also, the big one: does it do 1080p smoothly? Oh yes indeed. I've run a couple 1080p mkvs through it without any issues, it was smooth and looked fantastic. I'm hooked up with the cat5 now, but I am curious to try it with the wireless-N. I'll give that a go now and report back in a little bit. edit: yup, 1080p over wireless ran beautifully. 1080p takes a tich longer to skip ahead/back just because of the buffering but for anything else it's completely seamless. priznat fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 08:09
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Hob_Gadling posted:Stuff See, and that's where this thing shines. $200, out the door, small (about 1/8 the size the case you speced), awesome keyboard/remote (rf!) and it has no issues handling any 1080p file I've thrown at it (where my popcorn failed typically). To get something similar in terms of ability to handle files would cost at least $300 and require me to spend at least a few hours setting it up, that's not what I'm looking for and is why I got one of these. Could I roll my own? Hell yes, I've done it a few times over the past 5 years and when it comes down to it, I don't need/want the extra abilities of a computer, I just want a media center. My computer is for gaming, my home theater is for watching. Fatal fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 09:37
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Fatal posted:See, and that's where this thing shines. I totally agree that it's way easier to buy and set up a Boxee, that's what I said in the first message. That's why I'm interested in seeing how it fares in comparison. Building a HTPC from scratch is a completely different beast in all respects. When my mom comes to me asking what she should get I'd vastly prefer to recommend a Boxee (Google TV, WDTV, whatever comes out on top) to a computer.
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Nov 12, 2010 09:50
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Anal Volcano posted:So I was going to ask if the Boxee Box has better music support than Boxee pre-1.0, and now I'm seeing that there's not even a music option on the home page This is a big one for me and I didn't see it answered yet. No music option any more?
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Nov 12, 2010 14:43
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AlexF posted:This is a big one for me and I didn't see it answered yet. No music option any more? I'm pretty certain one of the screenshots I saw from Engadget's (or someone's) coverage of their event the other night showed music playing and a visualizer going along with it.
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Nov 12, 2010 14:52
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No music option or photo option, you need to browse and play these files from the files browser, and there is no real support for them (no playlists, shuffle, etc for music) these features are re-coming soon.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:13
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Well, that sucks. Hope they'll sort that out until this thing is released in Germany as I was really looking forward to not hook up my laptop to my AV receiver ever again.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:17
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Got my boxee box. updated to 1.0. The few flash things i tried worked fine. Turned it off since im at work.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:19
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The actual home page of boxee has become so useless I'm not sure why they left an icon for it. You can access all the boxee categories, but not the drill-down menus, so if you want to get to your movies and you click on movies, you end up on the "what's popular" list. You need to open the guide to get to where you want to go. Since the queue (now "watch later") and application shortcuts are gone from the home page, all that's really left is a menu that only goes to "popular content" and a "suggestions" section that gives me random shows from a few canadian tv networks.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:41
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all the features from .9 are there just a bit streamlined. When you add a show to favorites it automatically puts new eps on your queue. I've been talking on twitter to the boxee guys and they have been very helpful if you have any questions
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Nov 12, 2010 21:19
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Esk1 posted:all the features from .9 are there just a bit streamlined. When you add a show to favorites it automatically puts new eps on your queue. I've been talking on twitter to the boxee guys and they have been very helpful if you have any questions That definitely doesn't work for me right now, I've tried.
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Nov 12, 2010 21:32
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Just got my boxee box and holy crap, the thing is really small. I knew it was small from the picture of it with the coke can but seeing it first hand, its insanely small.
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Nov 12, 2010 22:13
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I'm really tempted to buy one of these but I'm wondering if it's worth it since I own a PS3 and am currently using PS3 Media Server for basically everything I would be using a Boxee Box for. I'm hoping to buy a couple of big USB Hard Drives and move all my media there to have the Boxee manage it. But can I send files over the network to drives connected to Boxee or would I have to physically plug them into my PC, upload then put em back on Boxee? From what I understand though, Boxee will not interact with my DVR or typical cable sytems at all correct? I also really don't understand the keyboard controller, is it strictly a keyboard or does it allow you to control any sort of volume, etc... as well? Bob Log fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 22:24
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Just got mine. I am trying to set it up to access my shares on my W7 PC. It can see the PC just fine, but when trying to connect it asks for a user/pass. I have it set to not require a user/pass on my PC, so I don't know why it is asking for one. I have tried my logon credentials and it doesn't work. Any ideas?
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Nov 12, 2010 23:43
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Esk1 posted:all the features from .9 are there just a bit streamlined. When you add a show to favorites it automatically puts new eps on your queue. I've been talking on twitter to the boxee guys and they have been very helpful if you have any questions All the features from .9 are not there. Aside from the unintended broken elements like the queue, there are lots of missing elements such as continuous media scanning, mark as watched/unwatched, music player functions like playlists etc, a youtube app, etc. I am a bit more forgiving about the bugs, even though I should be angrier about them. After all this is a 1.0 release and not a 1.0 beta 1. I just hope they get them fixed soon because the broken subtitles and broken queue is pretty bad.
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Nov 12, 2010 23:50
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Greenfield posted:Just got mine. I am trying to set it up to access my shares on my W7 PC. It can see the PC just fine, but when trying to connect it asks for a user/pass. I have it set to not require a user/pass on my PC, so I don't know why it is asking for one. There are lots of threads on the official forums about this, there might be some help for you there: http://forums.boxee.tv/forumdisplay.php?f=23
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Nov 12, 2010 23:51
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Well I got my Airport Extreme drives finally working by making guests have read access. Now its scanning my 4 drives. I do like the identify option so you can search and tell it what movie it is. And I have a lot of ISO rips from DVDs, and I do like that it grouped all my DVD sets into one option - one thing I can't change is the way it classifies them. I have a lot of TV sets ripped, but it shows up in Movies, not Shows. I guess its because the Shows category looks at individual episode files. It doesn't switch resolution either, so all my stuff is being upconverted to 1080p, which makes the DVD quality look pretty odd. But Day 2 with the Boxee Box is way better than Day 1.
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Nov 13, 2010 00:01
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Got mine up and running. A lot of people are going to be pissed when they spend a ton of time trying to get it to connect to something before they update it. Updating looks like it put a new version of the OS on or something -- it totally changed the way things look. So, far, it's been able to play all of my non-HD stuff with no problem. It does a drat nice job upscaling -- my digital copy of Toy Story 3 looks great, even though it's not in HD. I don't have wireless-n (does boxee box?), so I'm not going to try streaming 1080p content to it. I'm more impressed with how well it picked up my library of TV and Movies and was about 90% accurate in figuring out what was what just from the file name. It even sorted my TV shows by season. quote:I'm really tempted to buy one of these but I'm wondering if it's worth it since I own a PS3 and am currently using PS3 Media Server for basically everything I would be using a Boxee Box for. I don't see why you'd mess with Boxee Box unless you have cash to burn. I currently have a PS3/360 in my main living room area. I bought the Boxee Box for my bedroom television. Un-l337-Pork fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Nov 13, 2010 |
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Nov 13, 2010 00:02
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Un-l337-Pork posted:I don't see why you'd mess with Boxee Box unless you have cash to burn. I currently have a PS3/360 in my main living room area. I bought the Boxee Box for my bedroom television. Just my opinion, but I think that even in it's not-quite-working state, boxee is pretty far ahead of a PS3 media server. It would be farther ahead of they fixed all the bugs they introduced in 1.0 too. Has anyone tried connecting a drive directly to the box then accessing it through boxee's built in SMB server? My drive shows up but only says it has 310 megs free, not sure if this is yet another bug or if I'm doing something wrong here.
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Nov 13, 2010 00:40
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DaWolfey posted:The software available to download now from the Boxee site is months old. They have been working solely on the Boxee box and fixing the version of the software for that. Oldie but a goodie
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Nov 13, 2010 00:50
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So far, so good for my use case. Got the boxee and it fired up just fine and did the update. I started using Wifi (believe I have N, but not sure) and the 720p video needed to buffer just a bit to get going, but after that it didn't have any issues. I opted to just hard wire it in and it has been working flawless so far. Just set up Cars in HD for my son while I take care of a few things and will stress test it later tonight. VERY happy with my purchase at this point. Bare in mind, I may not have as full of a use-case as the rest of you. I'm a bit 'meh' on the online content and am looking for a nice front-end to play the media on my network without hassles or building a big noisy HTPC like I have now!
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Nov 13, 2010 02:39
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I never post in the AV forums but I am just chiming in that my boxee box has returned to it's box. It's going back. It's absolute garbage. my main gripe: Can't connect to a secure wireless connection.
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Nov 13, 2010 04:07
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ohhhlethal posted:I never post in the AV forums but I am just chiming in that my boxee box has returned to it's box. It's going back. It's absolute garbage. I think either your box is defective or you are doing something wrong... There are a lot of gripes with this thing but I definitely did not have this issue.
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Nov 13, 2010 04:16
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Nall posted:I think either your box is defective or you are doing something wrong... There are a lot of gripes with this thing but I definitely did not have this issue. The "connected to your network, but not the internet" issue is had by many. The thing is getting awful reviews, it's seriously a waste.
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Nov 13, 2010 04:43
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ohhhlethal posted:I never post in the AV forums but I am just chiming in that my boxee box has returned to it's box. It's going back. It's absolute garbage. Are you trying to connect to a 5ghz network? If you are, it will not work.
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Nov 13, 2010 04:46
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You also have to remember that this is the initial release of a brand new item. It won't work for everyone right away. This kind of situation has happened for every single new electronics release. There are people that praise it and enjoy it while there are groups that call it an abomination that should have never existed. People should know by now that to not expect a first generation device to work at 100% compatibility at release.
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Nov 13, 2010 05:11
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Dont know if anyone else has tried it, but hulu works through the browser.
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Nov 13, 2010 05:28
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