Jon's Tech Talk

Im not trying to kid anyone – being able to see SO MUCH streaming media on your TV is pretty freaking awesome. I just don’t think using an AppleTV and Boxee is the right way to go about doing it.

1. It’s a major hack – While its very easy to install, and your AppleTV is really running a special version of Mac OS 10.4, its still a hack. The easiest and fastest way to install right now is to use a thumbdrive and make a boot drive. Your AppleTV boots up into a small Linux install, moves stuff around, and installs the installers. You then download XBMC and Boxee through this installer and install. And yes, you may have to try this a few times
2. The AppleTV can’t really handle it – While Boxee itself is growing and becoming more popular day by day, its starting to push the bounds of the AppleTV. I can’t really find what triggers it, but sometimes Boxee is VERY fast on my AppleTV, other times it will easily lock up or take forever to do something. Im ok with it taking a second to load up content, but its frustrating when i have to wait 10 seconds between each click.
3. It makes my AppleTV restart all the time – I’m pretty sure that every time I quit the app, it restarts the AppleTV.  I then have to wait 5-10 minutes staring at an Apple logo to do anything again.
4. It goes away with every update to your AppleTV – Every time Apple pushes out an AppleTV update, it wipes the machine nearly clean, at least removing Boxee from your menus. You then have to go through the entire bootloader process again.
5. NO HD Content – Yup, it may look all pretty on your AppleTV, but nothing you see in Boxee is in HD. While yes, neither is most content on your AppleTV in HD, Boxee will never be. Unless they find a way to use the graphics chip to display this content, the main processor just will not be able to handle it.

What you can do without using boxee:

1. Download your own content, many in HD – obviously it will cost you when doing it through iTunes, but there is so much content (and quite a bit in HD) that you can download from iTunes. I make it a habit to go and download as much of the free interesting content in the iTunes store each week, just to have stuff. In a year, this can become a large library, just from free content.
2. Download content, but a little less legal – Using BitTorrent or Newsgroups, you can download just about any TV episode or movie you would like. There are plenty of tools, but the only one I have used is TED (Torrent Episode Downloder). This came in VERY handy recently, where our Comcast DVR missed a recording of House (which is not in the iTunes Store, and over a week behind in Hulu). In less than an hour, I had an HD copy for us to watch (which we did through the XBox 360, with its native Xvid/Divx support). I am thinking of setting up our recently reformatted PC to auto download some shows to see how it works for replacing Cable TV.
3. Sell your AppleTV, get a Mini, put on Plex - I almost wish I went back and did this. I really wanted the AppleTV for the music, with the added benefit of all the video content as well. Now that I have become so interested with the video content, I wish I had a more powerful machine hooked up to the TV. And then, instead of wasting your time with Boxee, try Plex instead. Its based off the same original code base, XBMC, but its not as bukly, looks much better, and is just so much more awesome. Eventually, we will be doing this.
4. Other minor hacks – I don’t have anything against hacking your AppleTV. While these can always be flaky, there are some good products out there that still work great. Some hacks  I recommend would be: CouchSurfer (Safari on the AppleTV. The only reason I dont use this is that our PS3 also has a web browser), Xvid/Divx/WMV codecs (this would allow you to play much more content nativly on your AppleTV. I installed these, but haven’t used them, since my Xbox supports the same just as easy), SSH (lets you SSH into your AppleTV, mainly to install the various hacks, which one could even use it as a simple web server or SVN host). Remember, if you do install these hacks, they will be removed (or at least have to be reinstalled) when you update your AppleTV
5. Podcasts - Just take a few moments to browse through the huge podcast Video Library in the iTunes store. I found so much content in there, that you easily have a free, interesting content to watch.

In the end, I still am mixed with how I plan or want to actually use it. I removed Boxee with the latest update to the AppleTV, but then reinstalled their new alpha that included the new API, AppStore, and Hulu again (though, most of all this seems to me like a ripoff of what Plex did just a month ago). I plan on giving Boxee one more trial this time, but plan on removing it soon and doing a hard reset on my AppleTV to make it feel all new again.

For almost 10 years, I have been writing about technology online. This content has always existed on my personal blog, and was somewhat hard to find and index while integrated with more ‘personal’ posts. After talking to quite a few friends and colleagues, I decided it was time to spin this content off into its own blog, and take it to the next level.

I plan on covering a range of topics here, including reviews, how-tos, programing, tech news, and other misc. items that come up. Look for the first of these (a few reviews) in the coming week!