Boxee: A Review

A couple of prompts nudged me to test out the Boxee TV service on my Apple TV over the weekend. While still in Alpha, Boxee’s reputation is that it will become an alternative to cable TV over the web. As I have been considering why I’m paying about $130 for my cable service right now, I wanted to test this service to explore whether I could get the TV I wanted through the web.

I already do get much of my TV over the web – through my Apple TV I have access to YouTube, video podcasts through iTunes and rentals. I can also attach my laptop to my HDTV and play movies downloaded through bit torrent and shows broadcast on sites like ABC.

What has been stopping me from canceling cable is the occasional urge to flick to CNN, BBC America or Bravo. Boxee doesn’t replace the cable viewing experience just yet – but what we saw was promising. It could only be a matter of time before a service like this becomes a serious challenger to cable TV.

Installing Boxee on my Apple TV was easy – I found a USB drive, downloaded some Google software and installed it onto the drive. I plugged it into the back of my AppleTV box and rebooted and got this screen.

After the install, I rebooted and Boxee appeared on my menu screen.

The first page you get presented with on Boxee is a list of videos that your friends have been watching. Boxee promises social viewing of TV. I’ll come back to this later.

There are about 18 channels on Boxee right now. Boxee has tapped into the web output of TV broadcasters and offers services like the BBC iPlayer and Hulu. The advantage of the AppleTV hack is that you can watch the content on these services on TV without the need of connecting a computer to it and then browsing the web.

The BBC look and feel was probably the best offering through Boxee. The BBC have a lot of experience with interactive TV in the UK and no doubt this has informed the layout and navigation of the content. The upside: every BBC show! The downside: you can’t watch it outside the UK.

CBS was a little disappointing. Much of its video content was old. Saying that – someone out there wants to watch every episode of Dynasty…

Before the show started, a no-smoking ad appeared. I assume that this has been pulled straight down from CBS’ server.

CNN was ok. It was a matrix of recent clips from their TV programming. Listing could have been far better (and search would be helpful) – however, if you didn’t have cable this service could be a good alternative if you just wanted to catch up on the top stories of the day.

Like the Obama train….

Hulu’s home page was promising – with highlights of their key shows…

… but the service is let down by its listing of content. It’s hard to scroll though every show to find the one you’re looking for. There was no way to cut the listing by genre or other category. The interface hadn’t been thought through much.

Each show on Hulu was preceded by an ad. Again, we assume this comes from Hulu’s servers.

The quality of the show The Office, for example, was ok. It was a web version after all – so worse than regular TV and far worse than HD. That might be a concern for some people who are thinking of switching to web-delivered TV right now.

MTV’s site looked promising….

… but then we found that the site only had 49 music videos to watch. A little underwhelming.

A highlight is the access to video podcasts like Diggnation through the service:

And one of the smarter features Boxee offers is that you can also add your own content via RSS. I could add a link to the PSFK Conference videos and then recommend each video to friends.

Beyond quality and quantity, I did have a major concern about Boxee though. The one ‘killer’ feature is the social aspect of TV watching. I suppose I downloaded the service to find an alternative to cable – but Boxee is promoting itself as a way to find new shows through your friends. Basically your friends can see what you have been watching – and might therefore find new content. Which sounds good until you get distracted for a moment and find yourself watching Britney’s Womanizer.

Then all your friends know you’re a perv (again).

There feels like there’s a permission level missing in this service. At least with Twitter, Facebook updates and the like, for the most part the user is broadcasting the message on their terms. Twitter doesn’t record your every move – just the moves you want to relay. With this service you’re suddenly aware that everything you do is being shared with your ‘friends’. it’s a bit like sharing your internet browsing history with people you know…. some of that stuff you kinda don’t want to get out.

Anyway – while I have an issue with the way and level of sharing of information on the system, it’s easy to understand Boxee’s social strategy. The service has potential and although it’s not a robust alternative to cable TV just yet – you can see that a service that can sit on your AppleTV or Mac Mini will become a serious challenger to cable. Taking cues from Boxee, you can imagine that web-driven TV of the future will offer:

* freedom of choice of content across channels and internationally
* a place you can add your own content via upload or rss
* a social suggestion engine
* a blur between content produced for the TV and for the web

There is still some way to go. But then again, change driven by the web is mighty fast. If someone comes up with a better look and feel, higher quality, a simpler process in a nicer looking piece of equipment and with social connectivity to maybe your Facebook and Google ID – we wouldn’t be surprised if people started to swap from cable to the web in the hundreds of thousands.

Boxee