D-Link Boxee Box Shows Feature for Watching Internet TV Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,309 words · ~6 min read
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okay well i promised some updates on the boxy box from d-link so if you haven't
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seen it already this is the boxy it's a little uh
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cube guy that sits preferably somewhere near your tv so
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that you can stream media from the internet as well as from your home
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network so i know i had complained initially about
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some well a lot of the content being more for us
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customers and not really much of it working in canada but what i was not
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aware of at the time is that yeah that might may be true for
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the repositories bearing in mind that the repositories that i was looking at
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are primarily third-party apps okay but
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that is actually not the case for a lot of the stuff under the shows
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menu so uh here's a perfect example uh is
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south park where it's listing all of the episodes
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of south park and you can either access them oh and this is cool check this out
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so it actually integrates the ones that you can access from the comedy network
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with the ones that you have stored on your own local
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server so check this out so you can play
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via a local file apparently i have two copies of this episode by accident or
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you can actually use the ad supported comedy network link
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to stream it online so it goes ahead and
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sorts all of your media which i don't have named in any particularly proper
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way and uh and sorts it all according to the
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season the episode the show and then
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which here here's one i think that i actually don't have yeah so there you go
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that's one i don't have on my home server so it gives you whatever options
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you have available to watch that content which is pretty cool and boxy is
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committed to doing updates as often as every week or two until they get the
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canadian content situation down to uh down to the point
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where they can actually filter out most of the stuff that's not
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actually available in canada so i haven't actually tried any other ones
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yet i just went with the south park example because i knew it would uh i
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knew it would be a good example because of uh the fact that i have
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a lot of the south park media on my home server but here we go why
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don't we try something else why don't we try the apprentice a show i have heard
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much about but never actually watched
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now the loading times for the web content are
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not ideal yet although i believe that is something that they're working on and
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they're also working on the integrated browser to make it
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to make it easier to go straight into full screen mode to play the media
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instead of going to a browser where you uh where you actually use the boxy
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controller to maximize to full screen and make any changes that you want to
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so far this is what i'd consider pretty typical loading time for a show i am
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running on a power line home network so
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i am not on wi-fi in case you're wondering by the way the color of the tv
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is just because i did white balance wrong and so it's showing up kind of bluey i
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guess while we wait we can see my cats who are
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playing in my christmas tree thanks guys that's really useful of you
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i'm sure glad that you're there to uh destroy things and knock down the uh the
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bobbles on the tree fortunately i got the unbreakable kind so i don't have to
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worry too much about them you know getting glass all over the
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floor
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well here why don't i fix my white belt oh there we go hey hey global tv the
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apprentice all right now i gotta find the remote which i put down i love the remote for
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the boxy it's so awesome keyboard on one side
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just general navigation on the other side it's awesome so what i'm going to
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want to do when it's done searching for the video is i can actually use the the d-pad here
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to move the mouse around and then i can i can manually maximize the movie myself
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and watch it in full screen mode just like that
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there we go so i just have to wait for it to buffer
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and then it should start playing here we go
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flexible mortgage uh-huh well we have one that lets you put extra money in
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take it out anytime and skip a payment once a year it's our you're the boss
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video quality is actually surprisingly good considering well
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hold on are you sure you want to leave this video yeah i want to leave this video uh
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video quality is actually surprisingly good given that you're streaming on the
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internet but i guess compared to watching on your computer you're sitting
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a lot further away from the tv so that helps a lot anyway so that i wanted to
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show the shows part of the boxy menu and demonstrate
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that that is content that is ready for canada so that's uh that's pretty cool i
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don't know about movies actually but um
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yeah here well since we're since we're working on this why don't we just like
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do that okay so what movies do we have dragon
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hunter legend of the hidden city march astronauts
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other people's parties hitman heart
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nfb app supporters so there it is it's a streamed movie i'm not going to wait for
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this to load right now so i'll just let you guys know if it was a similar time
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i'm gonna just turn the camera off for now
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yeah okay that one didn't work for me and uh neither did project grizzly they
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both sort of tried to load forever and didn't really work but uh they were both
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hosted on the same site so maybe support's going to be improved for that
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one in the upcoming firmware updates but this one worked really well and actually
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this is a perfect example of uh
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how this whole thing should work so it opens up extremely quickly
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and it's ready to go just like that so i can
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pause it as well oh can i fast forward even
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oh i can skip ahead what about fast forward oh i can skip ahead a little bit
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okay not sure what they're up to but apparently this is some kind of
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psychological adventure movie yeah it's a psychological
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adventure that breaks and distorts the rules of reality interesting
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okay anyway thank you for checking out my video on i guess both the shows as
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well as the movies tabs within the boxee box i think we had a look at apps
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already as well as files files is excellent by the way
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and uh oh yeah i guess i never really showed the home screen there you go
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hey here you go it's going to show us some cool stuff that just kind of works so yeah youtube of course is uh
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very well supported by the boxy so why don't we have a look at the angry birds
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peace treaty and end on that note by the way i quite enjoyed angry birds for my
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iphone it was excellent
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