The Boxee Box Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Ganesh T S on November 23, 2010 5:42 PM EST- Posted in
- Gadgets
- Media Streamer
- HTPC
- Boxee Box
Inside the Boxee Heptahedron
I suspect a cube was too boring, so D-Link lopped off a portion of the common shape and made the box rest at an angle. Calling it the Boxee Heptahedron might scare away too many potential customers so the two companies settled on the name Box.
The base is made out of a soft rubber in bright NVIDIA green (perhaps homage to the Tegra 2 that originally powered the box). The remaining sides are black plastic. The Boxee logo on the front glows bright green when the box is powered up.
Around back there’s a 10/100 ethernet port, HDMI output, optical and RCA stereo out options for audio, DC power input and two USB ports for attaching USB sticks or external hard drives. There’s an SD/MMC card reader on the side and internally you’ve got 802.11n wireless support.
The Box is small, measuring 12.7cm x 11.43cm x 8.9cm - 12.7cm (5" x 4.5" x 3.5 - 5.0" - L x W x H). It doesn’t really match any home theater gear but it’s stylish enough to not matter.
From left to right: Nikon D70, Boxee Box, Apple TV
Internally the Boxee Box is driven by an Intel CE4100 SoC and paired with 1GB of DDR3 memory.
The entire system is cooled by a single fan. The fan isn't loud but it is noticeable in an otherwise silent room thanks to its groaning sound. I couldn't hear it over any of the content I was watching however, even during quiet moments.
The Boxee Box is pretty easy to take apart, you just need a long Phillips head screwdriver with a small bit. Peel off the bright green rubber on the bottom to reveal the first six screws you'll need to remove.
Once inside there are a dozen or so other screws you'll need to remove to gain access to the motherboard (the gallery above shows you most of the process). The power supply is external which keeps a lot of clutter out of the case itself. The heatsink uses a thermal pad to make contact with the SoC making removing/replacing it a breeze:
The motherboard itself is tiny, much smaller than a mini-ITX board. I'm sure a lot of folks would be very pleased if Intel or someone else made a reference design like this that you could just buy on your own:
Boxee Box CE4100 motherboard (left) vs. Zotac ION mini-ITX motherboard (right)
See that little black tape covering a piece of the Boxee motherboard? Lift it up and you'll see a pretty significant rework on the board:
See the resistor mated over R12 (about half an inch from the top of the board in the above picture)? That's a rework. An error in the original PCB layout that had to be corrected after the fact. There's actually another one about half an inch lower. These two reworks appear to be on all Boxee motherboards. The black tape is used to keep them from being knocked loose. Future revs of the board will likely correct this problem and avoid the rework entirely. It's not a problem at all and won't impact reliability, just interesting to see on a final retail product.
The CE4100 die measures approximately 8mm x 12mm, putting its total die area at 96mm2. That's roughly 3.6x the size of the Pineview Atom in current netbooks, but still a pretty small die. By manufacturing it at 45nm the CE4100 is cheap to make as it doesn't require any capacity from Intel's latest 32nm fabs.
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krotchy - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
They must use the same electronics supplier we do at my work."Oh we decided to buy 500,000 older revision PCBs because the forecast said to, even though you already pushed all of the paperwork for the latest PCB revision and we were told not to order the old one. We will just rework them until the existing stock is gone unless you want to pay us $2,000,000 to scrap them"
justaviking - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
For "average Joe" consumer products, I have ask myself, "Can I picture my wife using this?"I have to say, "No." She would probably make me return it within a week. Why?
- Inconsistent behavior. Sometimes you do this, sometimes you do that, other times you do something else. Full-screen display is an example of that.
- Lock-ups.
- Bugs.
- Sort of aggregated, but not really.
- A naming convention for files on your network? I don't see that happening any time soon in my house. I might do it, just out of habit, but my wife or kids? No way.
It's a good attempt.
I appreciate the challenge Boxee is faced with, and I'd be happy to pull the plug on my cable bill too, but I don't see it happening yet.
Jackattak - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Couldn't agree more. I would love to forcibly remove Comca$t out of our house, preferably kicking and screaming (mostly screaming), but this fails the wife test (and my wife is fairly tech-savvy).There has got to be a better way. This is not a consumer-ready product. This looked more like an alpha release review. Far too many bugs and far too little consistency.
Chillin1248 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
From what I understand from Boxee, the reason behind the strange (and internet download full) naming strings is due to the IMDB service that identifies the movies and shows. This is completely separate from Boxee.bernstein - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Quote: "You can’t build a similarly capable HTPC with better power characteristics than the Boxee Box (simply because Intel won’t sell you a CE4100)."This is just wrong... go to to www.pandaboard.org (or heck even a beagleboard) and get a beagleboard friendly build of linux/xbmc and you've definately got a more power-efficient htpc... best suited for 1080p playback...
and just how does a piece of hardware with 10w standby power have best power characteristics? heck not any notebook will consume anywhere near that power in standby...
now nough harsh words. great article, as always. a delight to read.
ganeshts - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Why do you think Boxee went off from Tegra 2 to Intel CE 4100? And the Pandaboard you are talking about is OMAP4 based.. Surprise Surprise.. OMAP4 host CPU = Tegra 2 host CPU, and the power profile of both is approximately the same.. so the capabilities of both are going to be similar.. in other words, don't expect 1080p60 or any other complex encoding playback!vhawkxi - Friday, November 26, 2010 - link
My sister brought me one from Canada as South Africa is again looked over as a country where people would like to have the device.I just love it, so much better than the MVIX device I had to use as media streamer up to now.
The networking works flawlessly and the 802.11 n wireless is more than sufficient to watch content in 1080p 24Hz.
Contents is currently an issue but as soon as Hulu is up and running, I will have access to the source I have been using on the software version. So I am happy with that.
The browser is still a work in progress but I assume it will eventually get there and allow nice browsing on my TV.
So overall - even at $199 which I was more than happy to pay - it is a nice product with great potential - and it has already received 2 system upgraded in the last week. Much more than one can say of similar devices that gets bug fixes once or twice a year.
Well done dudes - this may still be a winner !!
trip1ex - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
About as expected. IT's a device that wants to give the consumer something it can't deliver - free cable tv.It's telling that the article felt it had to have the same number of pros as cons. YOu can tell this is the case when one pro says "it can only get better."
And another says, "they are pro-active at fixing bugs."
I sense some allegiance to Boxee. Maybe because they are a small company. Or because they have a personal relationship with those at the company.
In any case ....why wouldn't the folks who would tolerate bugs and problems just use a pc with their TV in the first place?
wadsworth - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
Love it. The new Thanksgiving firmware update fixed a ton of issues I had with 720p and 1080p non-MP4 codecs. The thing played everything I threw at it, from flv to mkv. The show/movie stuff was okay, but nothing compared to the "apps" component IMO. It is up to 142 web interface apps with everything from MediaFly to YouPorn. Heck, I didn't even know Sarah Lane was doing stuff with Leo nowadays. Moving through your own files is fast/smooth, unlike my WD TV Live.saltyzip - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
Boxee has so much promise, but it doesn't deliver on the most important aspect which is speed and reliability, especially when it comes to HD content.I have evaluated the free downloadable version for the PC and posted my views on their forum, only to be flamed by the moderators for expressing my constructive criticism.
No support for blu-ray or HD streaming is a big issue in my books, but the general reliability of playing any kind of content is really a hit and miss experience.
I had crashing, videos only showing on half the screen, resolution not changing to reflect the media being played so was jerky.
Why would anyone want to put this onto a TV in the living room, it would drive my misses nuts.
It needs at least another year to get it right, but by then it will be too late.