Ubuntu is on the HTPC and I installed Boxee Alpha

Ξ August 24th, 2008 | → Comments Off | ∇ |

The process of Ubuntu-ising a system was.. rewarding yet painful. The automatic update facility is exceptionally efficient, yet, everything feels limited compared to Windows because I either can’t find it or work out how to do it. You don’t just download and executable and run it, you have to sacrifice a fucking lamb whilst chanting code only the gods of Linux are aware of.

I just wanted to install some Cat 8.8 ATI display drivers, all I want is a widescreen resolution. And what smart arse thought it was a good idea to default to the maximum resolution it could detect? Great for a TFT no doubt, but shit if I’m using a projecter and it makes the text so small I can’t read it.

Anyway, it works in 4:3 even if it’s not exactly how I wanted it - so I download a file use terminal to access the Boxee website and tell it to install this file, and it did. Fair enough, I’m thankful for the careful direction on the website.

Boxee is a “social” media centre, currently in Alpha and while it’s stable it’s quite feature lacking. It’s built on a basis of XBMC which has been going a few years so I was sort of expecting more, yet there wasn’t - it’s still pretty basic.

It has some nice touches - the interface is nice, yet I was dying to use remote. Apparently it works with the remote in OSX though but I don’t own a Mac. It’s being designed in the right frame of mind - there’s tons of internet video feeds, you can rate and recommend stuff, you can surf SMB shares really very quickly and it builds thumbnails a whole load faster than Vista MCE but the interface is not as customisable, and there needs to be more video options, especially as I’m used to playing with the oodles of FFDshow options, and I really, really need the video acceleration of my AMD 780G’s UVD because an Athlon X2 4850e doesn’t cut 1080p video.

Also, I don’t “get” why everything has to be social. In one way they’ve made it work perfectly as it recommends watching stuff your friends like (assuming you like what your friends do), but I’ve no real desire to do the same to others. Any internet video I watch is not through my media centre it’s at my PC, usually when I’m in work. I sit down and turn on the projector because there’s something specific I want to watch, not because I feel like browsing around to see what’s new.

But that’s just me, and the whole point is everyone is different and some people love the social “web two point zero” side to anything.

For the most part, it’s too early to tell though. XBMC had a niche because the Xbox was a closed system, piss easy to hack and it was the only decent project out there at a time when HTPCs were just getting of the ground. Boxee falls into a sea of well established PC options and right now fails to really make much of an impact, but it will be worth watching, that’s for sure.