Boxee-The NextGen Media Center

Posted by Vivek ||

September 2, 2008 ||

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I just got lucky by receiving the alpha invite to try Boxee on my. I applied for it a long time back and totally forgot about it. However, today I got the invite and wanted to play around with it so I signed up only to find that it’s available for Mac and Linux users and not for Windows. So I booted my laptop into Ubuntu and downloaded and installed Boxee.

Following is what boxee wiki describes boxee:

Boxee is a social media center. With boxee you can play videos, music and pictures from your PC or from the Internet. You can also share with your friends what albums you’re listening to, what movies and TV shows you’re watching, send recommendations and more. Boxee is designed to work with a remote control (it looks great on a big screen TV), but you can also control it using your keyboard. Once installed boxee will start scanning your local Movies, Music and Pictures folders automatically. Boxee will attempt to bring artwork, reviews, cast, etc. for your media, so browsing your library becomes more useful and fun than looking at a list of files. Boxee is based on the best media center on the planet, xbmc.

The installation is pretty easy. Just follow the steps below:

Go to System > Administration > Software Sources.
In Sources Software dialogue, select Third-Party Software tab, click Add, and enter:
- for Gutsy: deb http://apt.boxee.tv gutsy main
- for Hardy: deb http://apt.boxee.tv hardy main
After closing this dialogue you can either use Synaptics and select Boxee for download, or use a terminal window, and enter sudo apt-get install boxee.

To run Boxee, Applications > Sound & Video > Boxee

So I launched it for the first time post installation with a lot of excitement, only to realize that there was no mouse support for using it and navigating through it. However, I found the setting to enable the mouse, much to my relief. The reason for this is because boxee is supposed to be used with a remote. The interface is pretty simple and easy to navigate using both keyboard and mouse.

However, it’s pretty heavy on my processor and RAM. I’d only recommend it to you if you are ready for some unstable and heavy performance. I have a few invites. Let me know if you need an invite. Following are couple of snapshot. The second one is of bliptv running on Boxee.