I can’t say I’m the biggest Iomega fan. In fact, I’m still bitter years after the Zip disc click of death. Yet, we’ve gots to give them a little attention today as the next Boxee Box. The guts are quite similar to the original D-Link Boxee Box but, as you can clearly see, the design is either more subtle or lacking in personality. Maybe both. However, the remote may be a tad better – featuring additional front buttons and a slightly concave typing surface.
Engadget went hands on and says Iomega’s Boxee variant will ship in three varieties this February ranging in price from $230 – $350 dependent upon onboard storage capacity (nada, 1TB, 2TB). Regardless, if you’re prepping for purchase, I’d say go with the D-Link – unless you totally cannot live with that unusual enclosure.
In other Boxee news, Vudu services are expected to hit those D-Link units this week with Netflix following at the end of the month. Boxee is still more pricey than the competition but, if local media playback is a large part of your equation, they’re a solid and improving option.
I don’t get the Boxee love.
I’ve tried it a few times on my Mac mini and it seems, for the most part, kind of a clumsy kludge. I don’t find it elegant or even desirable. I actually find it easier to just hit the various websites to get the content I want.
I have my mini hooked up to my TV and use it to get the content I want via Hulu, Netflix, and various websites. I’ll happily admit that it’s not particularly convenient and is really just a cost-cutting maneuver. If cable were to lower their rates from $65-70 for regular cable back down around the $40-45 area (all inclusive, don’t sell me the channel package and then say, “Oh, you need this extra box to actually view the content – it’ll be $20 extra a month”) I’d be right back with cable. It’s far more convenient.
I’m a tech-savvy guy and I’m not seeing it. The Boxee Box and this new box are supposed to be geared toward the regular consumer – maybe not grandma but moms and dads. I can see someone trying to use it because they dropped a few bills on it and then just saying, “You know what? This is kind of a pain to use.”
I know, it has it’s fans and those fans will likely come to Boxee’s rescue much like someone commenting poorly on TiVo and then getting blasted for it but I really can’t see this box taking off. Most of these small set top boxes (WDTV, Boxee, AppleTV, Roku, Google TV, etc.) seem like junk/throwaway boxes to me to where I could easily imagine not using it much a year or two down the road.
I know part of it is that they are gearing it towards people who are trying to cut the cord and maybe save a few $$ on their cable bill and I can see that. To think any of these boxes are really mainstream or are even heading that way seems silly.
Of the current crop, I’d say only Roku and Apple TV are close to mainstream. Boxee and WDTV are still geared towards the technically savvy who want to stream/access local media.
I have used Boxee for a while and while it is easy to use I find I am still at the mercy of the content providers and their exhaustive changing of their sites etc. WAF was really high with boxee so I don’t know what you find so Kludgy and a pain to use BradB. My wife just got it. However, I have gone back to XBMC and sickbeard. While I would be more than happy to use boxee and watch content providers commercial, they are still making it difficult to do that.
There are a couple of features on the Iomega box that have gotten overlooked by the media. One- the box has the Iomega NAS software which allow it to work as a NAS box for ALL your data, not just multimedia. Two- the box has Iomega’s new Personal Cloud feature which allows you to share all your files with family and friends over the internet, and access your data from anywhere in the world.
Its much more than just a “boxee player”, but I’m afraid not everyone will see that.
disclaimer- I’m an Iomega employee. :)
Cool functionality, indeed. And helps explain the premium over D-Link. Yet if this was so widely overlooked, perhaps many bloggers were improperly briefed… just sayin’. The outreach and release from Kraves PR hit me 13.5 hours after Engadget’s post went up (which was also about 6 hours after my own post) and in the 5 page release there were two sentences that might have been related to the NAS functionality you describe… yet weren’t as clear as you just were. Maybe the firm should have reached out over the last couple weeks (with someone technical) as so many other vendors did.
Another theory proposed by one of my Twitter followers:
Or maybe it’s just not that interesting…
I use Boxee and love it. Though I use my laptop (docking station connected to the TV). The iPhone remote app works well too.
I’ve experienced the zip drive click of death! Way to bring back old memories. What ever happened to Zip drives, and then those Jazz drives. Then there was some LS-120 mb 3.5″ disks by a competitor. None of that stuff seemed to take off.