Boxee

I have a bunch of media that I would like to play from my comfy seat.

So in my struggles I attempted to use MediaPortal, XBMC, some other thing that didn't want to work on Ubuntu or Windows, and finally Boxee.

I 'acquired' access to the released Boxee alpha, as my linux install did not work, just as my XBMC install did not work under Ubuntu (8.10). The windows install did not work under Vista. It would die on start up, same as XBMC and its apparently a common ailment.


I installed it on my main box (XP Pro, old CPU and GPU) and it worked OK, but with only 512megs it was starting to struggle. I installed another GB and it works a lot better.

They have since released another alpha, but I will not install that as it requires OpenGL 1.4, and my GPU only manages 1.3

Now, after spending time setting up my media names to be correct, and going through checking that everything worked (it did most of the time, but it wasn't great) I got some lovely Boxee action on my TV and computer.

Worked nicely, but I had to get off my butt to change programs.

But yesterday the Boxee Remote finally appeared on the iTunes applications store. So free downloading I performed, and I connected up to the host. Worked perfectly right out of the box.

Fantastic. There are two controllers, a button based one which is nice and simple, and a gesture based one where you wiggle your finger on the iPod and its harder to control but ok.

It doesn't, however, stop the Windows screen saver from taking over the PC, so if you are not watching Media, the screen saver will take over the PC and you have to manually stop that sucker. All in all, its a great little toy, and saves me spending money on a normal remote.