D-Link Boxee Box Network & Internet Media Streamer First Impressions Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,136 words · ~5 min read
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here is the boxy protruding from the table that I've propped my television on
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so I've got NHL game center running here I'm just watching some highlights cuz I
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don't have a proper subscription to it uh Game Center is an example of one of
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the apps that you can use with the boxy so the way I have it hooked up is quite
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simple I have an Ethernet cable plugged into my power line Ethernet which goes
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upstairs to my router I have an HDMI cable going into the TV for my audio and
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video and then I have a power now one of
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the first things I noticed about the boxy besides the cool glowing green logo
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on the front is that the remote is
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outstanding it's uh the response is very very Snappy and you've got okay so uh
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yes I want to leave this video uh you've got what is basically a four-way
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directional pad on the front with a play pause button as well as a back or menu
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button so um then you flip it over to
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the other side and you've got a full keyboard you can use the alt button here
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uh to access things like the at sign pound sign exclamation mark numbers all
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that good stuff that you might need if you're doing a little bit of data entry now you can also instead of using the
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directional pad the enter button play pause Etc here you can also use these
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buttons so there's your menu there's your directional Keys there's your enter
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pretty cool okay so here let's just go
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uh back so this is in the most popular apps uh this is not in the repos
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repository so just looking through some of the ones that are included uh
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remember that um Netflix will be coming
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before the end of the year so here you go some of the cool
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stuff that's available now with the subscription for
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I mean NHL is the one that I care about but with the subscription for uh for NHL
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you can actually go ahead and uh uh
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watch games that are outside of your area and it's a pretty cool stuffff so
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let's see what in Cartoon Network I haven't actually installed this app see
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it's that simple application installed successfully takes just about a minute
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well less than a minute and then you can go ahead and check out what's in the uh
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the various apps so uh hit down to browse okay oh boo okay well we can at
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least check out games uh this is going to be one of the disadvantages I guess
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in Canada is that not all of the content is going to be available here but if you
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really want to watch cartoons never fear because there are other options so if
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you go into the repositories I have taken the LI Liberty
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of installing uh the navx as well as fuz
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the D's third party repository so I had
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found some uh some cartoons on this one so this is all unsupported unofficial
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boxy content now the overall setup process for the boxy including uh
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plugging it in and uh running a firmware update at the beginning and then
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uh configuring it to run on my network probably took
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about uh gee maybe 10 minutes hey cool there's a
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uh repository for XKCD who doesn't like
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XKCD all kinds of neat stuff for this anyway the setup was very
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straightforward and uh very very easy to use now if I could figure out how to
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zoom in then that would probably be a good thing cuz it's pretty oh dear
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Wiccan readers I understand modern wiccans are not usually all about the
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curses and hexes but Darth Vader was recently converted as many is still
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figuring it all out okay all right well let's go back let's find some of the
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other uh apps in the repository here okay I'll I'll come back when I found
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that uh cartoon one well I've got some good news and some bad news the uh the
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bad news is that most of the repositories in the fuz the D as well as
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the other uh repository app that I had
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are not really all that applicable for
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Canadians um the good news is that the boxy is still a very competent media
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streamer across your local network so I'm just going to go ahead and uh show
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you guys one of the things that I did set up so if I go into movies and the
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navigation so intuitive actually if I go into movies and just click all it'll
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actually just grab all the movies on my Home
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Server oh no these aren't for my Home Server never mind uh oh I wanted to show
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you the local content okay so there I go to files ha oh wait no
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okay here we go files
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movies aha so that just pulls all of the
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cover art as well as the files from all the movies on my home server and then I
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can also go to shows and it'll pull down all the shows from my home server so at
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least in the meantime while we get some more content here in Canada it's uh
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pretty effective for sorting through all of your video
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files and playing
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them it does play 1080p HD files over
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the network which is pretty cool and uh
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yeah so I mean it does it's not perfect
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yet for Canadians but there is definitely a lot of potential here
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thanks for checking out my video first
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look at the dlink boxy box oh yeah I
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wanted to show you guys one of the cool things I found in navx uh they have a
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YouTube app and if I go to Canada I can
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see Canadian YouTube content and then I can find the most disgusted from today
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and and I will find my video about
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whether or not a tinfoil hat blocks your brain waves from being read by the
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government oh I clicked the wrong one oh I'm watching Justin Bieber not what I
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meant to do no leave please aha the boxy
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can uh close content that you didn't mean to watch very quickly excellent
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excellent feature so there we go do tinfoil hats really block your brain
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waves and it starts playing YouTube videos fairly quickly I'm even uploading
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videos right now so that's how quickly it's able to buffer and start playing