Boxee Walkthrough-Alpha
In the past several months, I’ve seen a ton of a new video and audio apps added to Boxee and so I decided to do a new walkthrough of the interface and how I use it.
For those who don’t know, Boxee is a free cross-platform media center application based upon XBMC. Boxee can scan your network for shared (or hosted) video, music and photo files. It then searches the web for album art for each file and organizes them within Boxee by media type (TV Show, Movie, Music, Photos).
The best part of Boxee is its ability to play Internet content all from within its own application. Instead of going to Hulu.com to watch the episodes of Family Guy or Fringe, you can watch it from within Boxee and if you like the episode, you can recommend it to your other Boxee friends. Internet content current available in the Windows, Linux and Mac/ATV version of Boxee include Hulu, CBS, Joost, PBS, Pandora, Last.FM, Flickr and much more.
Login
After launching Boxee, it presents a login screen. You can create several users, or just have one as I have. Sadly, there is currenly no way to have it autologin if you just have one user, but that will be an option in the upcoming Beta version of Boxee.
Welcome
The Wecome screen is the first thing you see after you log in. It gives an overview of all recent activity and is where the social networking aspect of Boxee comes to life. The first section is recommendations from my Boxee friends. Below that are things my Boxee friends are currently viewing. Below that is my local (or network-shared) content that’s recently been added to Boxee. Below that is the things I have recently viewed from within Boxee.
Menu
When I arrow to the left with my remote control, I’m presented with Boxee’s menu. From there I can either navigate to the Applications or choose from the other Boxee menu options.
Applications – Videos
From the Applications->Video menu, I can see all the Internet Video Applications currently available from within Boxee. Each of these application plugins can be added or removed easily from within Boxee by using the App Box. Above is an example of some of the applications currently available to me.
Applications – Videos
Here are several of my favorite Internet Video applications. From the top: Hulu, Revision 3, The Guild, TWiT, NASA TV and Weird Al. Other notable video apps are boXXXee (Adult Content), CBS, CNet TV, FailBlog, GeekBrief.TV, Happy Tree Friends, MLB.TV, Onion News Network, PBS, Ted Talks and Project Lore. Several recent additions to Boxee include: Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Democracy Now, Nickelodeon, Sprout, and TV Land.
Applications – Music
From the Applications->Music menu, I can see all the Internet Audio Content currently available from within Boxee. As with Videos, each of these application plugins can be added or removed easily from within Boxee by using the App Box. Above is an example of some of the applications currently available to me.
Applications – Music
Above are a couple of my favorite Internet Music applications Pandora and RadioTime. Pandora allows you to stream music similar to an artist you like. In my case, it is streaming music similar to Maroon5 (including Maroon5). RadioTime allows you to play music from radiostations that broadcast on the Internet. I added several radiostations from Kansas City. Other notable music apps are Last.FM and NPR.
Applications – Pictures
From the Applications->Pictures menu, I can see all the Internet Picture Content currently available from within Boxee. As with Videos and Music, each of these application plugins can be added or removed easily from within Boxee by using the App Box. Above is an example of some of the applications currently available to me.
Applications – Pictures
Here are several of my favorite Internet Video applications. The top two are Facebook, followed by I Can Has Cheezburger and Flickr. With Facebook, you can see both profile pictures of your friends or pictures your friends have uploaded. You can also flip through your favorite cat photos with I Can Has Cheezburger. And with Flickr, I choose whose photos I wish to see or just random Interesting photos from Flickr. In this case, I chose my own account and displayed my KC Zoo album. After clicking on a photo, you can begin a Ken Burns style slide-show through all the recent photo collection.
Local Media
From within the Local Media menu, I see all my local movies, television shows, music and photos available on my local network. In this case, it is media that I have either ripped or copied onto my HTPC. Boxee uses IMDB to automatically find the album art for movies and television shows.
App Box
The App Box shows all the applications that are available but not currently added (New Applications) and Applications that are currently available in the Applications menu (My Applications). New applications can be made available by adding in a new repository. Boxee user Fuzzthed created one repository which contains many popular repositories all in one. Just add: http://dir.fuzzthed.com to the repository list to get them.
Boxee is available at http://boxee.tv as a public-alpha for Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Apple TV. The next major update for Boxee on all platforms is due out on January 7th, 2010 when Boxee finally goes Beta. A brand new interface will be designed with many new features including: a new user interface, improved navigation, ability to search TV Shows and Movies, a user controlled Queue, shortcuts and my person favorite, the ability to bookmark video to watch where you left off at a later point.