Social Media Center Boxee in Action
That short video presentation demonstrates all features of social media center Boxee in action. Enjoy!
XBMC ‘Atlantis’ Beta 1 released
Recently the Beta 1 of Linux-based media center software XBMC was released. Originally created for Microsoft XBox it’s available now for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. There is a possibility to try Atlantis without installation (thanks to LiveCD).
XBMC offers a full set of features for HTPC: organize media library, playback video files, listen music, show photos. Its functionality can be extended using plugins and GUI can be customized using themes. There is an only one missed feature - Personal Video Recorder (PVR). But according to rumors XBMC development team is working to implement it. Definitely it won’t be in this release. Because the final version is scheduled for October right after Ubumtu 8.10.
I played with Boxee - another media center software with social features. XBMC team participates its development. I like Boxee. It’s really good and user friendly. There is only one reason why I don’t use it on my media center - lack of PVR functionality. I’m going to play a bit with Atlantis too.
Fashion HTPC case
HTPC case AVC-S1 produced by Korean company GMC doesn’t look like a PC at all. It supports Micro ATX motherboards. The aluminum front panel of AVC-S1 sports 16 X 2 VFD display, menu navigation jog button and enter button. Detachable internal 3.5″ drive cage allows to install HDD easily. The AVC-S1 has four expansion slots for low profile cards. Additionally it can be equiped with IR receiver and remote control.
The price of the GMC AVC-S1 is about €150 which is very reasonable for such kind of HTPC cases. By some reason GMC products are not available in Europe but I found a lot offers in Russia. It looks a strange a bit for me.
New alpha version of Boxee has beed released
Recently a new alpha version of software for media centers Boxee has been released. Following new features were implemented in the version:
- manual editing of (un)identified movies/tv shows/albums;
- manual adding of a source;
- added mms:// and UPnP support;
- OSD for pictures;
- updated source management;
- bug-fixes.
A full Changelog and system requirements can be found here.
Fashion media center Boxee: first impression
Finally I got invitation to test the first “social” media center Boxee. Installation under Kubuntu 8.04 was pretty simple. I just added Boxee repository and install it using apt-get. After running the Boxee it automatically found media content in the standard Linux directories - Pictures, Videos and Music. It tried to guess the names of movies by their filenames and get information from IMDB. For those video files which weren’t be recognized cover were created using some frame from movies themselves.
The user interface looks pretty nice. It’s intuitive and allows to easily navigate by media files, control playback movies and music. It’s easy to specify new media source. Doesn’t matter where it is - on local PC or on some network share. Moreover, using Boxee it possible to listen Internet radio, which becomes very popular this time.
However the most interesting and original feature of Boxee is its social component. It allows to people find friends and share between them info about what they watch or listen (be careful with adult content ;)). Additionally they can rate or recommend movie or song. The very basic social feature is offered by Facebook add-in for Windows Media Center. But, for sure, Boxee is much better.
I heard an opinion about competition between Boxee and MythTV. Maybe in the future but currently Boxee don’t support PVR functionality at all. Taking into account that XBMC also misses LiveTV I can conjecture that Boxee won’t have it in the future. In any case, Boxee is good media center software integrated with social service. Will see its progress.
P. S. I can send the invitation somebody who’d like to play with Boxee. Just leave a comment here.