TEST REPORT

Internet Streaming Box

BOXEE

Unusual design Easy login through your own Facebook account Hardly used 16:10 and 21:9 picture formats available Fully compatible with Dolby Digital systems Multitude of Apps provide access to an endless selection of content

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TEST REPORT

Internet Streaming Box

An Unusually Designed Streaming Box

When you see it for the first time youll quickly recognize that the Streaming Player Boxee is not your typical everyday product, instead its exterior leaves behind a lasting impression with every user. It measures 11.5 x 11.5 cm with a maximum height of just about 13cm. Maximum, because the Boxee is constructed in such a way that from the front it has no symmetrical edges and doesnt have any familiar geometrical pattern. If you didnt know any better, youd think that this was the work of a bunch of kids. Nevertheless, the design of the Boxee is quite striking and is the focal point of any TV setup. The manufacturer incorporated an SD/MMC card reader on the side of the Boxee; we found this rather practical in that this location doesnt interfere with the front view and yet is still easy to reach. The rear panel is very nicely equipped and comes with every conceivable input and output. This includes an RJ-45 network port, an HDMI output, an optical digital audio output, a composite audio output in the form of RCA jacks, two USB ports as well as a jack to connect the external 12V power supply. We were impressed with the workmanship of the receiver and considering its size, its weight of 720g (1.6Lbs) is quite imposing. Contrary to other streaming players, its size you and from weight prevent slipping this box into your pocket and taking it to other locations. One button on the top of the box turns the box on and off whereby momentarily pressing this button turns the receiver on and holding down this button a little longer turns it off. The included remote control is divided into a top side and an underside. While the top side only has seven buttons, the underside has a complete keyboard with a total of 38 buttons. Now,

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if youre thinking right now that you might be accidentally pressing the buttons on the underside quite often, you would be mistaken; thanks to the remote controls slightly curved shape, this turned out, to our great surprise, not to be the case. connected to hidden WiFi networks and its full support of all the standard encryption systems (WEP, WPA, WPA2) takes care of the necessary security. We definitely liked the next step, namely the required software update. Within two minutes the update via our broadband DSL link was taken care of and after a quick restart, the new software was ready to be used. Depending on the TV being used and the type of signal connection, it may be necessary to adjust the image signal output and orientation to match the existing hardware. For this purpose the Boxee automatically activates an assistant that helps to match the output video to the existing TV or projector. In the next step the Boxee asks you to set up a user account or, if you already have an account, to log in. We liked the idea that in addition to the classic method of registering using a user name, password and e-mail
1. Boxee's Main menu 2. WiFi networks are automatically recognized 3. The automatic software update guarantees that you always have the latest software installed in the Boxee 4. The video signal output can be perfectly matched to your TV 5. You either set up a new user account or use your Facebook account 6. Weather forecast 7. Adjusting the output resolution 8. Several picture resolution and Overscan options are available 9. OSD keyboard fonts can easily be added 10. During the sorting of music files and videos, articles can be ignored if desired 11. The Boxee can handle nearly all the available network protocols 12. A variety of settings for the optical digital audio output 13. Boxee's Main menu 14. Network settings 15. Watch Later function

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While the box is running, the Boxee logo with lettering appears on the front side of the box thus making it look very classy. Its illumination is dimmed through the black plastic glass so that it is not overpowering. sion. Before using the receiver for the first time, the user needs to connect it to the home network/Internet; the box cant do much until this task is taken care of first. Since the Boxee supports WiFi it immediately starts searching for a wireless network. If needed the Boxee can also be switched into wired Ethernet mode. Thanks to manual SSID entry, the box can also be Overall, a very positive initial impres-

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address, you can also use your own Facebook account for registration. After a quick push of a button on the remote control and entering in your Facebook user data via the integrated keyboard, the box is personalized and ready to use. Doing it this way also saves a little time in the next and second-to-last setup steps. The Boxee only asks you for Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr user data as long as you have an account with these services. This will let you not only use these Boxee functions by yourself, but also with all of your social networking friends. As a final installation step, the box asks you if you want

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to playback content from the Internet or local content. We didnt quite understand this since the Boxee will recognize this on its own anyway after a certain amount of time and, secondly, before actually using the box you wont know ahead of time sired OSD language or menu appearance. The Boxee supports the resolutions 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i 50 Hz and 1080i 60 Hz. Unfortunately, you wont find 1080p. The picture formats 4:3, 16:9, 16:10 and 21:9 are available as is an Overscan (an image view that is larger than originally intended by the resolution) of up to 6%. So, why does the Boxee offer four different picture formats? Most modern TVs are 16:9 models and if you should still have an older TV it would be in 4:3 format. But there are some newer 16:10 models out there as well as 21:9 monitors. 21:9 monitors are especially meant for playing back theatrical movies in their original format but with the disadvantage that 16:9 broadcasts would now be shown with black bands. In the end though, it doesnt matter what TV you have, the Boxee will be able to adapt to the correct format. Thanks to a wide selection of OSD languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, gian, Swedish, Russian, Finnish, Danish, Turkish, and

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what youre going to be watching. Besides, you can also change your preferences at any time. From what we can tell, this is an unnecessary question; this setting can be changed anytime and theres naturally, in addition to the selection Content from the Internet also the option All Local Multimedia Content available. The Boxees main menu presents a list of all of the boxs main Watch functions Later, (Friends,

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Shows, Movies, Apps, Files and Web) as well as notifications of multimedia content that the box automatically searched for and recommends to us. At the very top the box blends in the current local temperature and time. Before we occupy ourselves with all of the capabilities of this box, it pays to take one more look in the Settings menu. Its divided into six sections (General, Media, File Sources, Network, Parents Control, System) and is logically laid out. In the submenu General you can adjust settings such as output resolution, de-

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Farsi, Portuguese, NorweCzech Polish), it should be possible for anyone to find an appropriate choice. We also appreciated that the Boxee also provides choices for international OSD keyboards, such as, Thai, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek or Chinese traditional. When the box is used to receive radio channels or to play back music, a functional screen saver would be a nice thing to have. The Boxee has three different variants (Slideshow, Black and Dim) available. In Slideshow mode single folders and the pictures they

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16. The vast library of current shows 17. Detailed programming descriptions provide information on content 18. Sorting the shows by provider 19. Picture quality is excellent and leaves nothing to be desired even on large bigscreen TVs 20. Thanks to AirPlay compatibility the Boxee can also be fed with multimedia content from iPhones and iPads

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contain can easily be selected. The submenu Media lets the user select the primary audio for videos and also customize the subtitle display (size, The language and color). manufacturer turers website. In this userfriendly PC or MAC tool you simply select all of the directories with the desired content, such as music, videos or pictures, and before you know it they are all accessible on the Boxee. The Network settings are also quite extensive. In addition to the usual suspects, like DHCP, manual IP entry as well as the various WiFi options, the Boxee also has settings for Proxy server and VPN. These two options make it possible to bypass IP blocks. A quick search in the Internet reveals a wide assortment of mostly paid servers for this purpose and thanks
21. Setting up VPN connections is also supported 22. Thanks to the integrated parental controls, inappropriate content for children can be hidden from view with the push of one button on the remote control 23. Thanks to access to social networks, the Boxee automatically searches in the background for videos that were uploaded to the network by my friends 24. The Watch Later function makes it easy to watch video clips on a TV that were previously marked on an iPad or Smartphone 25. The web browser worked perfectly in our tests and thanks to the keyboard on the back of the remote control, it makes for a real alternative to a PC or Smartphone 26. Entering a web address 27. The web browser lets you post status updates easily to Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr 28. The web browsers Favorites function 29. AirPlay playback of an HD video from an iPad via the Boxee 30. Thanks to the Watch Later Bookmarklet, video clips from YouTube, Vimeo, etc. can easily be sent to the Boxee 31. App overview of the Boxee. The inappropriate content is staring you right in the face on the very first page 32. CBS8 News from Los Angeles 33. Delicious recipes invite you to try them out yourself 34. The recipes are presented as entertaining video clips 35. M4A music playback

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even thought about a small detail, one that always irritated us in other devices: the listing of articles with the alphabetical sorting of music files or videos. This has earned high praise from us and provides for the user a nicely organized media list. It gets more exciting in the File Sources menu. Here the local sources are set up that will dictate from where the box will access multimedia content. Choices include AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), the Boxee Media Manager, NFS (Network File System), UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), SMB (Windows Network) and Local. Regardless of whether you make available your multimedia content on your MS Windows PC (SMB), have your content running on a Linux PC (NFS), utilize for example a UPnP compatible satellite receiver that makes available all of your recorded content, or if you want to be able to access your content on a MAC machine (AFP), the Boxee offers the corresponding transfer protocols for all of these applications. We had no problems in our tests setting up network connections using all of these standards. At the same time we were also able to select how often the Boxee should look for content and what kind (music, video or pictures) it should be. If you want to have absolutely nothing to do with network protocols, you can download for free the Boxee Media Manager from the manufac-

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to the Boxee support of classic proxy servers up to and including complex VPN connections, these can easily be used. The heading Enable Streaming from iOS devices in the Network settings really caught our attention and before we take up this subject a little later in this report, we can say this: yes, the Boxee is AirPlay compatible and can therefore be supplied with multimedia content wirelessly from an iPhone or iPad. The Parental Controls menu can be used to block inappropriate content from the kids and as we demonstrated in our tests this is an absolutely necessary and useful feature. If its not turned on, a variety of content will appear in the Main menu that truly would not be suitable for kids. Last but not least theres the System submenu. From here the software can be updated, a number of browser settings activating can or be adjusted (such as, deleting cookies, deactivating pop ups) and the digital signal output can be matched (Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, to know that you can do others things during this time since the box takes care of this task in the background. Second in the list is the heading Watch Later and this highlights a problem that we are all very familiar with: suppose that youre surfing the Internet and you come across a great video on YouTube, Vimeo or some other service. Instead of watching that clip on your PCs monitor, wouldnt you rather watch it on your big HD TV? Up until now you had to identify the name of the clip, find it again using a compatible media box and only then could you play it back on your normal TV. But with the Boxee its not like that; thanks to the Watch Later function you can create a small Bookmarklet for your browser (a small Java macro in the form of a bookmark). This will let you transfer a clip that is currently active on your PC to the Boxees Watch Later list so that they are then instantly available to you from the box. This feature works very well together with nearly all web browsers and operating systems and functioned exceptionally well in our tests. The communication between the PC and the Boxee was handled by a server from the manufacturer and during our tests it was always readily accessible and performed its functions without any problems. It didnt take long for this Watch List Bookmarklet to become the most widely used entry in our web browsers Favorites list. The next heading is Shows. Here numerous shows will be listed from all different categories like Action, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Documentaries, Talk Shows,

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DTS-HD, LPCM 7.1) to a digital stereo system if it is connected to the Boxee. After all the basic settings have been taken care of and the box has been customized the way we like, the Main menu finally appears with all of its different functions. The first thing to pop into our eyes is the Friends heading. With this feature the box gathers all of the

36. DivX HD Video 37. Boxee Remote App for the iPhone 38. Boxee Remote App's control buttons for the iPhone 39. Boxee Media Manager - it doesn't get easier than this 40. AirPlay playback of an HD video from an iPhone via the Boxee

multimedia content that was uploaded by all of your social media friends. This process takes about one minute. In the meantime its nice

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etc. The content comes from various providers such as Crunchyroll, Engadget, Revision 3, TED or TVO whereby most of the content originates from Crunchyroll and Revision 3. The quality varies greatly by provider but from some of them (e.g. Revision 3) its top notch thanks to HD resolution. In addition to free offerings, theres also paid providers available thus making classic television series such as Southpark, Lost, The Simpsons or The Office available. The heading Movies is presented graphically the same as Shows and provides access to MUBI and OpenFilm. MUBI is an Internet service that is geared toward those movie lovers whose interests lie beyond the classic Hollywood block-

busters. Theres seemingly an endless amount of professionally produced content that is divided into dozens of categories. We were totally amazed at all the different MUBI content that was available. With the OpenFilm platform the Boxee has access to an equally large archive of movies and clips from up and coming filmmakers. Here directors have the ability to present their work to the general public and make themselves known. Also divided into numerous categories, the interested user can discover one or more top movies that might be more enjoyable than

some of the new Hollywood blockbusters. For those within the USA the services Netflix and Vudu are available. For a subscription fee, users have access to whatevers currently available on TV or in the movie theaters. Hollywood blockbusters, current TV series and the latest productions from the biggest movie studios are directly available through the Boxee at any time. Unfortunately this service is not free and due to international regulations cannot be viewed outside of the USA. Theres a wide variety of possibilities hidden behind the heading Apps. From here Apps for all the different services such as YouTube, Vimeo, Weather, News, etc. can be down-

loaded. Not only that, theres the RSS Feeder, Apps for Revision 3, MLB, Slingbox, etc. that can be selected. If youre interested in foreignlanguage TV channels, you can also get your fill with content like CBS8 Los Angeles. Theres even Apps for hundreds of delicious recipes available. And the best part? The recipes are presented not just in plain text form but also as video clips making the decision to cook that much easier. You might recall at the beginning of this report we mentioned that the App section also contains an assortment of inappropriate content for the kids from providers, such as, YouPorn, PornHub, or Porn Banana whereby a sorting of all the available Apps based on user preferences reveals quite a few more similar Apps on the first results page. To put it plain

and simple, the number of available Apps for the Boxee is nearly unlimited and thus offers something for every user. Thanks to the practical App store, the user can download these small programs to the Boxee with the push of just one button on the remote control. During our tests it took us quite some time to go through the extensive App store to get an idea of all the interesting Apps that are available. The list of Apps is truly widereaching. And yet with all of this Internet content available, the Boxee can also play back local multimedia content via the network, a USB connection or a memory card. As mentioned before, all of the standard transfer protocols are available for network access. The following file formats are supported: Audio: MP3, MP4, WAV, OGG, DTS; Video: MKV, FLV, MTS,MT2S, TS, AVI, DivX MPEG4, XVid MPEG4, MOV, MP4-2 and WMV-9; Pictures: JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP and TIFF. In our tests the playback of audio and video files via network and/or memory card worked perfectly. Even the display of pictures on the big-screen plasma TV in our test center was quite enjoyable. Naturally, we also wanted to take a closer look at the Boxees AirPlay function. As soon as the Boxee was connected to the local network, the iPhone and iPad became possible playback sources. One button-push is all thats needed and just like that the HD

video on the iPad can now be seen in full-screen mode on the TV. It also functions just as perfectly for all forms of music and Podcasts. And while were talking about the iPhone and iPad, the Boxee Remote App for all iOS devices can be used to operate and control the Boxee comfortably from your Smartphone although the capabilities of the virtual remote control are somewhat limited and therefore isnt really that much of an added benefit compared to the real remote control. To round it all off, the Boxee is enhanced even more by the integration of a fully functional Internet browser that can be found under the heading Web. In addition to the capability to save to your Favorites, it makes for an excellent alternative to a PC-based or Smartphonebased web browser thanks to the practical keyboard on the underside of the remote control. In our tests it had no trouble handling any of the websites we surfed to; it could even handle Flash content without any difficulties. Social from networks, Internet, videos IPTV, the
Active Power Apparent Power

expert
OPINION
BOXEE Internet Streaming Box RECOMMENDED PRODUCT BY

Thomas Haring Test Center Austria

+ Excellent manufacturing quality and extravagant design

The number of available movies, series, music, radio stations, Apps and IPTV is unbelievably large In addition to Standby mode, the Boxee can also be turned off completely lowering its power usage to less than 1.0 Watt

None

ENERGY
DIAGRAM

Mode Apparent Active Factor Active 13 W 25 W 0.52 StandBy 12.5 W 23.5 W 0.53

movies, series, music, radio and of course the Web, it all comes merged together very nicely in the Streaming Player Boxee and is available to the user using just one single remote control. Thanks to the many different network communications capabilities, multimedia content from other devices can be played back through the Boxee.

Initial 15 minutes active operation, then two minutes completely turned off and then 15 minutes in Standby

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