Review: D-Link's Boxee Box

For about two weeks, the Boxee Box has been the crown jewel of my entertainment center. With its unique design and amazing features, this has been a fun conversation piece. A big thanks to D-Link who gave us an opportunity to review the "Boxie Box".

Before I get right into the software, let's take a look at what you get in the box. When I opened the box I was greeted with of course the Boxee Box system itself, a 4GB SD card, a HDMI cable, the Boxee Box remote, and a few manuals and guides.

The Boxee Box has a unique design which gives the impression that the device is sinking into your entertainment center. The front glossy face will have the D-Link and Boxee Box logo when powered on. Located on the side, you have a SD card slot which will play your personal videos, music and pictures. On the back you have all your connection slots, lastly the top has a power button.

D-Link made an amazing remote to go with the box. Now at first it looks like a simple two button and directional pad remote, however, once you turn the remote over you are greeted with a full qwerty keyboard. This is one of their biggest pros and their biggest con. I hate, absolutely hate it when you get devices that just give you the directional pad to select letters when needing to type something out. I always find myself typing something out and hitting the wrong button and losing my title search, but D-Link gives you the qwerty keyboard, allowing me to just whip through the search quickly and easily. However, what I wish D-Link would change is adding a backlight or make the buttons glow in dark, since it is near impossible to type out something in the dark.

On start-up I was able to quickly add a new account and connect to my home network through Wi-Fi, it also gives you an option to connect via ethernet. Once it fully started up, I had no problem playing media files through my external USB hard drvie, which has several extensions. You could view your media over the wireless network as well. The neat thing Boxee does is the ability to identify your media files and add artwork to your collection, so lets say you ripped your DVD of Inception, Boxee will add artwork for you. It is also capable of 1080p which is becoming a standard these days. These are some of the features that differentiate it from other media devices like the Apple TV for instance.

Boxee Box allows you to fully connect to the internet to view hundreds of television shows and movies, connect with friends, and even surf the web. Lets say you wanted to watch the latest episode of CONAN, you could view a few of the latest episodes by choosing the show and desired episode, doing so will bring you to the website hosting the show as if you were to view it on a computer. You do have the option to pick the "watch it later" feature, this will save a episode to a section on Boxee that stores all of the shows you wanted to watch but just didn't have the time.

Now let's turn our attention to "movies", where you have several options to choose from. When you enter the Movie section you are greeted with several feature films linked with Vudu, which will sometimes cost you money depending on the movie. However you have ability to pick different movie sources from EZTakes, Indie Movies, MUBI, OpenFilm, Vudu, and Youtube. Now Boxee Box does support Netflix, located in the App section of Boxee. Apps on the Boxee gives users even more features to choose from. You can listen to your pandora account, Netflix, Vevo, TED, AccuWeather, Boxee browser, the list goes on and on. D-Link's Boxee does have a browser you can use for the internet. We do see that the Boxee Box does support flash, so going on to some of your favorite websites should not be a problem.

If you would like to get your hands on the Boxee Box, then head over to http://www.boxee.tv. The MSRP is set at $229.99. Overall I think the Device was great and definitely can compete with other similar products out there today such as the Apple TV or Roku.

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