Boxee Announces New Beta & Previews Hardware Box

Tonight Boxee used their “Boxee Event” to show off a new beta version of their HTPC software as well as their new Boxee Box, made with hardware partner D-Link.

New Boxee Box

The new Boxee-branded Box will be the D-Link DSM-380 and is expected to run about $200.  It will be on display at CES and plans are for it to be available for sale sometime in the first half of 2010.

The Boxee Box will serve up media from the home and internet and deliver it to the TV without needing a computer at the TV. 

Renderings of the hardware device are below – no it hasn’t melted, just a strange (but somehow attractive) design:

Initial Hardware Specs:

• HDMI, SPDIF, RCA Audio
• 2 USB Ports
• Ethernet
• Wi-Fi 802.11n

New Boxee Beta with New UI

They announced the new Boxee beta which is slated to open to the public on January 7th and will gradually be released via invitations to early access users.

The new UI will get most of the talk at first, but the addition of DXVA seems like a significant improvement for Boxee – it lets your CPU take advantage of DXVA and play 1080p without taxing the CPU.

Other additions:

• Bug fixes
• Performance improvements
• Official support for Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Karmic

UI Changes

Home Screen:

The Home screen has been redesigned to help with navigation (I’m personally very happy they decided to throw out the old home screen.)

 

Global Menu:

The global menu provides access to the Settings (TOP – Logout, Settings, Queue, Feed, History), the main menu (MIDDLE – Photos, Music, Movies, Home, TV Shows, Apps, Files) and shortcuts (BOTTOM) favorite Apps, TV Shows, Movies, or folders.

 

TV Shows & Movie Library:

I see a TV Show library, but I’m still looking for the tuner functionality where you actually record TV.  That’s a major missing feature from Boxee in my book although it does have a library page to organize archived TV shows by season and episode.

Both TV Show Library and Movie Library will include both Internet and local content

See additional screen-shots and read more at the Boxee Blog and the D-Link Boxee Box site

Week in Review – December 6, 2009

Below is a quick summary of the past week's news and stories on GeekTonic.

WDTV Live Media Player Firmware Bricks the Players – Ouch.  Hope you WDTV Live owners didn’t update your firmware this weekend.

Compare eBook Prices & Selection with Inkmesh – A great way to compare eBook and audiobook prices and availablility

Deal Watcher – The latest deals for this weekend

Handbrake – My Favorite Video Transcoder Gets Updated

A Guide to Troubleshooting Standby – MissingRemote...

Deal of the Day – SiliconDust HDHR Dual Tuner $124

Want to Share? Guest Blog at GeekTonic To Enter Media Payer Giveaway

Barnes & Noble Fumbles with the Nook e-Reader Launch – Looks like the Nook will be in many stores tomorrow (Monday) but won’t be shipped to the first who pre-ordered till later this week

Smart Sports Recording with Sage Recording Extender – A genius HTPC addon made with sports fans in mind.

CyberMonday Shopping at GeekTonic

This week plans include a few guest posts I’m excited about, a how-to on firewire tuning with SageTV, a first-look at the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader, the Winter 2010 TV Premiere Guide and a few more gift-guides.

More in-depth content for Media Gadget Fans at GeekTonic.com.  If you’re in to the Twitter thing, be sure and follow me on twitter under the name GeekTonic.  Thanks for Reading GeekTonic!

WDTV Live Media Player Firmware Bricks the Players

If you own one of those Western Digital WD TV Live Media Players, read this:  Do NOT do a firmware update to 1.01.12.  It apparently is causing the units to brick and as of tonight there isn’t a fix.  Western Digital is telling those who have experienced this to RMA their box!  Here’s the official notice from Western Digital via their blog:

“A small percentage of our users are experiencing a problem with WD TV Live Player when they update to the newest firmware release (version 1.01.12). We’re investigating the issue and until we identify the root cause, we’ve removed these updates.
If you’ve successfully updated to version 1.01.12 there’s nothing further you need to do. If you are experiencing any problems with your WD TV Live player, contact our customer service.

As soon as we learn more we’ll post the information here. Should you find any other issues that you feel have not been addressed with this update feel free to leave a comment or tweet us @WDTVLive. Thanks for all your input and know it is always helpful to hear from our users!”

WD says “a small percentage of our users”, but it seems like a pretty large group according to these forum posts.  Regardless, WD has pulled the firmware for the moment and I’d be very careful of any updates until they give the all-clear.

Lots of anger and upset folks at the Western Digital Forums Here

via WDTVLive Blog & Engadget

Compare eBook Prices & Selection with Inkmesh

As we prepare for the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook Reader review I’ve been doing some research on eBook pricing for the various eBook readers.  My favorite tool for this by far is Inkmesh.com.

Inkmesh combines information from ebook and audiobook sites and makes it searchable and comparable.  Sources include:

• Amazon Store
• Barnes & Noble
• Powells.com
• Sony eBook Store
• Fictionwise
• HarperCollins
• Audible.com
• Baen Webscriptions
• BooksOnBoard
• CyberRead
• Diesel eBooks
• Feedbooks
• Lulu eBooks
• ManyBooks.net
• MobileRead
• O’Reilly eBooks
• Project Gutenberg
• Smashwords
• Steve Jordan Books
• The Internet Archive
• eBookMall
• eHarlequin

 

Inkmesh lets you search eBooks, audiobooks, newspapers and magazines or browse them by subject while filtering by price and content.  It’s best function is to price compare for the various eBooks and other content on different platforms such as the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble, but also includes public domain books and some not-as-known eBook stores.

Here’s a screen-shot of a search for a silly mystery novel – you’ll notice both Amazon and Barnes & Noble matched prices here.

 

And here’s an economic-centric book where the search shows Amazon at bit over a dollar cheaper.

Check out InkMesh for yourself – it’s a great way to get a feel for the pricing at the different eBook stores.

Deal Watcher

While Black Friday and CyberMonday is over, Tis the season for deals – especially for gadgets.  Below are a few highlights of the ones I posted this past week, but check GeekTonicDeals Saturday and Sunday as I have a ton of nice ones coming up for the weekend.

Recent Deals

Logitech Alto Cordless Notebook Stand w/ Wireless Keyboard $24.99 Shipped

ESPN WiFi Color LCD Universal Remote Control $99.99

Zune HD 32GB $260

Flip Ultra Camcorder 2Gen $90

40” 1080p LCD HDTV $500

Samsung 2494SW 24-inch 1080p LCD Monitor $234

Samsung 24.6” LCD HDTV Monitor with speakers $340

Dell Alienware m15X 15.4” Core i7 Quad-core Gaming Laptop $1379

Asus Eee PC Win7 Netbook $342

Logitech MX Air Remote $70

Enermax SLI Modular Power Supply $50

 

Free Stuff

• Holiday Greeting Cards Free From Google – I’m going to try this out over the weekend.  Kind of funny to see google doing snail mail as a “feature” isn't’ it?
• Free Holiday MP3s (non-Holiday songs too) from Amazon MP3 – I’ve found some gems on Amazon’s “free MP3” listing over the past year and they have some decent ones now too.  Here’s a few on the list as of this weekend:
  • Tori Amos – Snow Angel
  • Lady Ga Ga – Christmas Tree
  • Sixpence None the Richer – Silent Night
• Free Holiday Song Each Day – from Amazon’s 25 Days of Free special, they’re adding a new, free Christmas song available each day.
• Free Burn-in CD/DVD from AVSForum.com – I haven’t tried this one, but I respect the AVSForum.  The thread is a good read regarding burn-in since that seems to be a common topic again with everyone and their dog buying new HDTV’s.

 

Again, don’t forget to check back to this post – or better yet subscribe to GeekTonicDeals to keep up on this weekends special deals.  The online stores are really discounting this week as they see it as one of their final opportunities to catch the online shoppers.  Watch for more deals this weekend…

Handbrake – My Favorite Video Transcoder Gets Updated

Handbrake as been my favorite video transcoder for quite a while now.  It’s price (free) along with being pretty easy to use and quite powerful made it the go-do program for most of my video transcoding needs.  Last week Handbrake received a nice little update:

About Handbrake:

Handbrake is a free, multi-platform DVD ripper and video transcoder.  It takes a DVD or video file and can transcode that file into various formats you might want to convert it into such as an iPod readable video file or perhaps just to make the file take up less space.

What’s New in this Update?

This update should offer improved picture quality, faster processing and expanded support.  Here’s a few of the highlights from the update:

 

• 64-bit support -  Handbrake now works with 64-bit builds and they say it performs approximately 10% better than the 32-bit variety.
• x264 – Better picture quality, smaller file size, faster etc.
• Soft subtitles – HandBrake can now include subtitle tracks that can be turned on and off, instead of rendering them onto the video track permanently (which also reduces video compression)…
• Live preview – You can now test HandBrake settings before spending hours on a full encode.
• Better DVD Reading Library - HandBrake now uses an improved DVD reading library called libdvdnav. This means it can now read some DVDs it had trouble with before, and can select different angles on a DVD.
• Improved TS Support - For non-DVD sources, HandBrake now offers improved transport stream support, especially for high definition sources.
• Constant quality encoding – No more looking for the perfect bitrate for a source–HandBrake is migrating to quality-based encoding. This means that instead of telling encoders to use a specific size and vary quality to meet it, we tell the encoder to vary size to meet a given quality level. Overall quality improves, since bits are spent only when they are needed, and are saved when they are not.   This should output much improved picture quality.
• Audio-video synchronization has been further improved.

There are many additional improvements.  Check out the full list at the Handbrake Website

A Guide to Troubleshooting Standby – MissingRemote

HTPC blog MissingRemote has a nice guide to troubleshooting computer “Standby” to make your HTPC work more like a consumer electric device instead of a cranky computer.  It’s written by Andy Van Til (babgvant), author of DVRMSToolbox and is a must-read for anyone who uses HTPCs.

Check it out at MissingRemote.com

Deal of the Day – SiliconDust HDHR Dual Tuner $124

Amazon (affiliate) has my favorite tuner of all time, the SiliconDust HDHR dual QAM tuner for $124.

SiliconDust HDHR-US HDHomeRun Networked Digital Dual TV Tuner $124.37

 

Thanks to Stephan for the Tip!

To follow deals just like this one, subscribe to GeekTonicDeals

Want to Share? Guest Blog at GeekTonic To Enter Media Player Giveaway

While I do have a lot of ideas and thoughts to share with all of you on GeekTonic, it’s always nice to hear from others to get a little different perspective, knowledge or experiences.  That’s where you come in.  Read on for some ways you can join in with the GeekTonic community and even for some ways to be rewarded (read below for info) for participating and making GeekTonic better.

Make a Comment – Follow on Twitter

The easiest way to share is to comment on the posts here at GeekTonic.  I use the Disqus commenting system which has been working very well for the most part and hopefully makes commenting painless.  I like all constructive comments that contribute to the topic at hand – pretty much anything as long as it isn’t “spammy.”

GeekTonic also hangs out on Twitter so follow me there.  I don’t tweet every post, but I will link to the big ones on occasion as well as share other stuff on occasion.

Send Me a Note

Do you have an idea for an article?  A question I might be able to help with, a tip on a story or deal?  Complete the “contact me” form and I’ll receive an e-mail.  As long as I know it’s not from a “spammer” I’ll respond to your e-mail of course.

Write a Guest Post – be a Guest Blogger of GeekTonic

For guidelines on writing a guest post at GeekTonic read this.  It has all of the details you need – it talks about the types of topics, how to send it in etc.  For examples of guest posts, click here to check out a bunch of guest posts from this past year.

What do you get out of it?

Regular Readers of GeekTonic Know:

If you’ve been hanging out around GeekTonic long enough you know I give away free stuff.  Not engraved pencils or silly stuff, but very valuable electronics and useful items for your media setup.  Usually these giveaways are related to a review I’ve written (from free items I received for a review) although there have been other items I’ve given away as well and all that is usually required to win is to comment here on GeekTonic or on twitter.

Those Who Have Published Guest Posts this year (1/1/09 – 12/11/09) could win a Media Player

Writing a guest post has its own rewards – like knowing that thousands of people are reading and enjoying your writing for instance or just knowing you were able to share with others with like interests.  But I wanted to give back more to you this year…

The GeekTonic blog has been blessed with many great guest posts this year and I’ve been thinking about how I could thank all of you who have contributed with your writing.  Well, I won’t be able to directly reward all of the guest bloggers, but I have a special gift for one and even a couple of smaller ones for a few others.

One lightly used (but in great condition) SageTV HD200 Media Player/Extender will go to one guest blogger from this year. 

I’ll be selecting the winner based on all guest blog entries submitted to me (including those already published this year) by the end of day, December 11th – it doesn’t necessarily have to be published by then, but at least received by me.  Shipping will be paid for by GeekTonic within the U.S.  Anything beyond the U.S. we can work out the details on.

The winner will be announced the following week and will receive the media player by Christmas!  There will be a few other, much smaller prizes as well which will be announced soon.  Disclaimer:  Not all who guest blog will win

Don’t think we’re making tons of money with GeekTonic or anything – far from it.  It’s just that I like to put most (if not all) of what is earned at GeekTonic back into the blog and back to you, the reader. 

One last thing - remember that your online shopping done via clicks through GeekTonic affiliates or GeekTonicDeals affiliates all provide the cash to make these giveaways possible and pay for the costs of running the site and are always appreciated.