#BOXEE TV DVR REVIEW SOFTWARE#
#BOXEE TV DVR REVIEW FREE#

As a point of reference, Boxee streams approximately 900MB – 1GB of data down from the cloud storage per hour of HD video. If there is no Internet or it’s running painfully slow, there’d be no access to your recorded content. As with all Internet services, both viewing online content and watching recorded television is at the mercy of your Internet connection. Yep, it streams the tuned channel from your actual Boxee through the web to your browser. The super cool thing is that you can stream live and recorded TV from the Boxee itself or the website. You can set recordings via the TV interface or go to my.

What Boxee adds is the ability to schedule recordings of OTA (but not Clear QAM) channels which get saved to Boxee’s cloud storage. A more traditional guide can be used as well. There is a tile/icon based interface for browsing channels by default. While pretty much any HDTV these days has an ATSC and Clear QAM tuner for getting in local channels, the Boxee has the same.

#BOXEE TV DVR REVIEW FREE#

There are free and paid ($10/mo) versions of the cloud storage. You still use your own antenna for OTA, unlike Aereo which “rents” you an antenna at their data center, but your content gets uploaded over the Internet to Boxee’s servers. This is dependent on your physical location-only a few larger markets, such as the DC Metro, are available at the moment. Yep, you can not only watch live TV, you can record it up on the Internet for safe keeping-and so you can access those recordings from any web browser. It’s primarily for watching and recording over-the-air (OTA) TV to the cloud. Further, we’re under the impression Boxee DLNA improvements are on the way.īoxee might point out here that the reason for this box isn’t entirely for traditional Internet streaming. Maybe we just have too many things on our home server-and need to standardize on the proper type of video file. Very cool, but video codec support seems limited and the interface is slow to navigate.

But I’m hoping that changes so they can be more competitive.Īs an added bonus, and something that Roku lacks, the Boxee also supports native DLNA browsing on your home network or via a USB drive.

#BOXEE TV DVR REVIEW SOFTWARE#

The “new” Boxee (as opposed to the former PC-based software and 1st Boxee box) has a limited number of apps right now, only about a dozen overall. However, we’re missing our Amazon Video On Demand, HBO GO, Plex, and aother options that Roku has over Boxee. All of them work pretty well, if not quite as responsive as the comparable Roku apps. There are a few other streaming apps on the Boxee, like Vudu, Pandora, Spotify, MLB TV, and even YouTube (which Roku still lacks). The Netflix interface on Boxee is pretty good, and picture quality rivals what we got on the older Roku XD, maybe on par with our Roku 2 XS. The Boxee Cloud DVR ($99) is a standalone device that has the following features: ATSC over-the-air (OTA) and Clear QAM cable tuner, the “cloud” digital video recorder (DVR) for OTA channels, and a small selection of network and online services.Īfter using the Boxee for a few weeks, it’s done fairly well replacing the main features we used on the Roku – mainly Netflix. But that’s a discussion for a little later. We didn’t replace the FiOS cable box, mainly because we rely on a myriad of cable channels that the Boxee can’t yet support. I ended up replacing our living room Roku with the Boxee so we could get some real-life experience, including input from the kids who are the primary users of the now-removed Roku. Recently we got the opportunity to test out the Boxee Cloud DVR thanks to Zatz Not Funny’s very own Dave Zatz. So we’ve appreciated time-shifted TV and renting/streaming video for a long time. Back in the day, before Verizon and HDTV, we enjoyed our networked ReplayTV DVRs and Netflix DVD subscription. Entertainment-wise, we’ve been using Roku for years and enjoy the Verizon FiOS TV DVR system quite a bit. We at the Ward household like trying new things-or at least my wife and kids tolerate me periodically tinkering with our home computing, entertainment, and networking configurations. Beyond ZNF, Joel can be found at Joel Explains It All and on Twitter. Fellow tech enthusiast and DC neighbor Joel Ward joins ZNF as a Features contributor.

Boxee tv dvr review