D-Link Boxee Box review

The recent revamp of the £99 Apple TV looked like the perfect media-streaming device – except Apple unforgivably forgot to permit enough content into its walled garden to make its box of delights worthwhile. So with video flooding in from sources such as the BBC iPlayer, Channel 4 and more, has the Boxee Box succeeded where Apple so disappointingly failed?

This peculiar-looking device is based on the long-established Boxee software, a free downloadable alternative to Windows Media Centre. But instead of installing a media-centre PC or tethering your laptop to the living room TV, D-Link offers this dedicated device.

The hardware itself is based on an Intel Atom CE4100 processor. It’s essentially a lightweight netbook spec trapped inside a tissue box-sized cuboid that’s had one of its corners shaved off, making the device look as though it’s emerging out of the surface it’s sat upon. It’s quirky design, but just subtle enough – as is the persistent fan hum that emanates from the device.

On the rear you’ll find an HDMI port for piping a 1080p signal to the TV, as well as analogue stereo and optical S/PDIF output. There’s also a pair of USB ports for connecting external drives, an SD card reader slot on the top, plus an Ethernet port for those who don’t want to rely on the built-in 802.11n wireless.

Like the Apple TV, the Boxee interface is perfectly-pitched for the living room TV. Both attractive and sensibly laid out, the interface has a set-top box style feel that’s ideal for someone perched on the sofa on the other side of the room. The accompanying remote control has basic navigation buttons on one side and a full Qwerty keyboard on the other, which is great for tapping in the name of shows in the search box or URLs in the web browser.

Yes, that’s a full web browser with (gasp it, Apple fans) support for Flash, although on this evidence we concede that Steve Jobs might have a point. The Boxee Box often struggled to display Flash-heavy websites smoothly. Nevertheless, it’s fine for casual browsing, with a slow-moving cursor the only real irritation.

The web browser is only one of dozens of apps available for the Boxee, including content from providers such as Flickr, BBC iPlayer and YouTube, as well as RSS readers, podcast players and much more, with a heavy slant towards the more geeky type of content. (One word of caution: if you choose to unlock the “adult” apps using the Boxee’s settings, you’ll find the likes of YouPorn sitting at the top of the app menu, which hardly makes it a family friendly, living room device). It’s the quantity and variety of these apps that makes the Boxee a far more rounded entertainment device than the Apple TV. Who’d have thought it – Apple outdone by apps?

However, it’s within the apps that the cracks start to appear in Boxee’s slick interface. While the iPlayer TV guide is presented in a chunky TV-friendly menu, when you select a show to watch, the software suddenly jumps to the regular iPlayer desktop PC interface.

That means, from ten feet away on the sofa, you’re forced to click on an impossibly small icon to make the video play full-screen. And while we’re talking about iPlayer, HD streams simply refused to work, crashing the Boxee on more than one occasion, although the device is perfectly capable of streaming other Full HD content.

Other apps have their problems too. Flickr’s photo slideshows have a distracting strobing effect at the side of images, as indeed does the built-in photo gallery app, while others have an occasional tendency to crash. These bugs largely fall into the category of irritations rather than show-stoppers, but it’s not the flawlessly smooth experience you’d hope for.

Aside from the apps, Boxee has a vast library of Shows and (rather obscure) Movies ready to stream on-demand. Much of the TV library comes via Channel 4’s YouTube channel, providing vast archives of series such as The Inbetweeners, The Green Wing and River Cottage, as well as the latest catch-up shows.

While the Channel 4 shows play instantly in full-screen as soon as you press the play button, Five’s programmes throw you into the web browser and refuse to play in full-screen. It’s this kind of interface inconsistency that mars the Boxee experience.

If the internet TV experience is patchy, the media streaming facilities were flawless in our tests. Video and audio format support is extensive, and we had no problem streaming 1080p video in a variety of formats from another laptop in the house. The option to plug in and play media from external USB drives is yet another feather in the Boxee’s cap.

Overall, the Boxee Box is the very antithesis of the Apple TV: stuffed with features and content, but tainted by bugs and interface quirks. And at £200, it costs twice as much. Yet, we have no doubt which device we’d rather have beside the TV: D-Link’s flawed entertainer beats Apple’s unblemished bore, even if we can’t give it our wholehearted recommendation.

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