New Boxee Box wants to become the star of your living room. The magic box of D-Link is updated to its latest version to bring complete multimedia content (series, movies, pictures, music) and with a strong social focus, commitment to compete in a field where whose rival consoles like Xbox, media players “simple” as those offered Western Digital or Iomega products “niche” such as the Apple TV.

Technical Specs of Boxee Box:

Manufacturer: D-Link
Model: Boxee Box
Device multimedia streaming
Connectivity: Ethernet 10/10, WiFi 802b/g/n
Ports: HDMI 1.3, S / PDIF, stereo audio, 2 x USB 2.0, SD / SDHC
Web: Boxee
Price: 150 €

What gives us the new Boxee Box?

Boxee Box is a great innovation offers a full PVR (Personal Video Recorder) can save the contents recorded in the cloud so that in this way, we can access them from any device.

This new technology arises from itself Boxee alliance with American chains plus several cable companies, so it does not seem very likely to see the latest model of Boxee in mqny or the countries, if not with the usual restrictions, to namely without PVR without Netflix without Hulu, etc.
What we have then? Actually much Boxee Box is a great hub for our home contents is that although as discussed below has certain aspects that certainly can improve, for 150 euros going to get a multimedia center, well used, can become an inseparable friend.
A box that is not lost

Boxee Box bet for a design course: you either love it or hate it. Its polyhedral flees aesthetic conventions and one element that “hide” behind the TV or a shelf, claiming for itself a role justified. This is a nice gadget, we can put together that will leave our TV and intrigued more than one; you cannot help but wonder if part of the furniture or something else.
Inside Boxee Box is present an Intel 1.2 GHz Atom CE4100 processor, who was not the will no more in power, they do offer the necessary to manage our multimedia library and play content at 1080p, which is more than enough for the purpose of the apparatus. For connectivity, Boxee Box offers two USB 2.0, a card reader SD / SDHC, an optical audio output S / PDIF, an analog audio came out (RCA L / R), HDMI 1.3 connectivity, WiFi support (thanks to Chipset 802.11 b / g / n), DLNA and Ethernet.
We miss though, on a device of this size, which is not offered internal storage. To provide “just” streaming our content, it is somewhat peculiar that has opted for this size although as noted above, the evidence points to a functional rather than aesthetic decision.
The set comes complete with a remote control rather original. The obverse features the classic play buttons and content control (Play, Pause, etc.) While in the back we find a full QWERTY keyboard that will help us to navigate in certain applications where we need to enter text either in your browser, whether specific applications like YouTube and others.

If we said that Boxee Box features a stripe design at high altitude, not so with the command. Although the idea of the double face is good, not just convinced us how it was resolved. The main control part (where the video control keys) is somewhat unclear, and that unless we look good just never be clear whether we are pointing to the TV or to ourselves. On the subsequent recognition of the keys is right, but maybe they are too hard to write with some ease.
Are you missing content?

Boxee Box triumphs in America because it is a great platform for content. Not only because it offers integration with platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Vudu, but after signing several agreements with players like ABC, FOX or NBC offers its users the most popular content of these chains, in both real-time and file mode.
On the other hand and to be fair, yes leftover content in applications section. Applications are actually an adaptation of the content today offer Internet portals like Youtube, Vimeo, CNET, Justin TV, etc. by using the RSS feed of these web pages by choosing own interface, adapted to the needs and characteristics of a television. There is everything here, since by default Boxee Box offers more than 300 applications. Some of them are a result of a brilliant way and we have to go from being a link to your own browser.
It is also necessary to highlight the approach “social” gadget, allowing us to connect with our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Thus, not only can we see on our TV audiovisual content that share our contacts, but we can share with the world what we are seeing on our television.
Finally it should be noted that Boxee Box also allows us to add manually other repositories of content creators, so if you explore a bit on the Internet, we can find interesting sources with which to complete our experience.
Our own media collection
No doubt the management of our media is one of the strengths of Boxee Box. Compared to other solutions (such as XMBC) you have to be very careful when classifying our content to eg properly acknowledge all the chapters that make up a season series, Boxee seems to be much more “intelligent “.
Suffice it to say in between are the content we want to add to your database, to be able to distinguish whether it is movies, series, music and more. Once added presentation of them in our “Library” is bright, able to find the poster series / movie in question, the summary of it and even the criticisms that have been made.
Be improved controls instead we have available during playback of the film, resulting in our opinion too basic, and even a little confusing for the user who is not used to handle this type of media solutions. This is not to deny that overall, the experience of play and control the content that we’re playing is quite higher than we usually offer multimedia discs “to use” which among other things, are noted by a command and a graphical interface more than questionable quality.
One of the benefits of our hard drives to connect to Boxee Box is able to enable its location on our local network, since the firmware of D-Link supports protocols like Samba or VPN, so to transfer new content to our disk drives no need to connect them to our team. In addition and if we have certain skills, we can remotely access our Boxee Box from our FTP port router, thereby having our little media server.
It is also very interesting to offer its users Airplay support (so that users of devices like the iPhone or the iPad can do streaming content) and generally with DLNA for anyone with a compatible smartphone with this protocol can do the same.
Conclusions

Although as we have seen in our Boxee Box is a very oriented to the American public, it remains one of the most interesting media hubs.

For less than 150 euros, have a stylish device, able to offer many of the best content on the Internet, as well as an excellent cataloguer of our media files. Your social module makes really easy browsing videos that share our contacts and the fact that is has Airplay support and allowing us to have hard drives on a wireless network, surely will be a plus for many users.

This was all regarding the Boxee Box, stay tuned with us for more updates.